Senate ready for Iraq debate – again
Apparently the GOP will allow the Senate to debate the Iraq War today. From the Washington Times’ S.A. Miller and Christina Bellantoni;
Senate Republicans yesterday pledged not to block the beginning of debate on a Democratic resolution that calls for all U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 2008.
    “I think we’re going to proceed because we don’t mind having the debate,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, adding that Republicans still have misgivings about the bill.
    “It moves us down the roads towards further micromanaging the troops and having a date specific for an exit,” said the Kentucky Republican. “It’s not at all clear at this point how this week’s debate on Iraq is going to play out.”
Yeah, I say give the Democrats enough rope to hang themselves. They want to take half-measures while avoiding committing themselves to what they know is complete failure. Let ’em go.
But Dingy Harry Reid is going to sabotage the debate by putting an early withdrawal clause in his proposal. From the DC Examiner’s Anne Flaherty;
“Agreeing to a debate is not enough,” said Reid, D-Nev. “Republicans must heed the voices of their constituents and the overwhelming majority of Americans and vote to change the president’s flawed Iraq policy.”
Reid is pushing a resolution that would set a target date of March 31, 2008, for the withdrawal of combat troops. The measure says U.S. forces could stay beyond that date only to protect U.S. personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces and carry out counterterrorism operations.
I guess Harry doesn’t realize that Republicans have a constituency quite different from his, apparently. While some of the morons that keep sending Harry The Sock Puppet to the Senate may be telling him they want out of Iraq, but the folks who sent Republicans back to the Senate aren’t. If Harry’d back off from the Kool Aid for a moment, he might realize that the majority of Americans don’t want to lose in Iraq.
After yesterday’s scathing editorial condemning the Congressional Democrat’s proposal that doesn’t take into account what will happen to the Iraqis, the Washington Post criticizes the Republicans for taking into account what will happen to the Iraqis;
The lack of debate inside the Republican Party reflects not just loyalty to the president but also a belief that Bush’s policies still offer a chance for success in Iraq, GOP officials said. But that has done little to calm growing fears that Republicans will be punished politically unless there is a dramatic improvement in the course of the war and Americans’ perceptions about it.
“I don’t think there is a lot of Republican anxiety that we’re doing the wrong thing and it’s hurting us,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman from Minnesota. “There’s a lot of feeling that we’re doing the right thing and it’s killing us.”
That’s right. It’s like I wrote yesterday, the right answer is always hard. The easy way out never works for long. But, I guess you can’t tell the baby-boomer Leftists stuff like that.
Category: Media, Politics, Terror War
