The Dems Continue Their Implosion

[Annie]

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w.../19/democrats_set_to_call_for_phased_pullout/

Democrats set to call for phased pullout
Congressional debate on war enters 2d week

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | June 19, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats, seizing on public discontent over the war in Iraq, will offer legislation this week calling for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a shifting of forces to other nations, where supporters say American soldiers will be less likely to come under attack.

The resolution, crafted by Democratic Senators Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Carl Levin of Michigan, will headline a second week of debate in Congress over the state of the war. It is the first real debate Congress has held on the war since the US invasion in early 2003.

Senate Democrats, many of whom voted to authorize force in Iraq but have become critics of the war, will unveil a resolution today demanding that President Bush begin phasing out US troop presence in Iraq this year.

The resolution, expected to come to the floor as early as tomorrow, also would call on Bush to provide a plan to redeploy remaining troops after 2006, but it does not specify where troops should be moved and how many might come home.

Under the proposal, a small contingent of American troops would be kept in Iraq to train local forces so they can take control of their own country.

``An open-ended time commitment is no longer sustainable," Senator Dianne Feinstein , Democrat of California, said on CNN's ``Late Edition" yesterday .

The nation needs ``a timetable, some goals, some discussion with the Congress by the administration," she said. ``The president might not have wanted to have done that early on, but three years and three months and a bogging down, I think, suggests that the time has come for some discussion as to where we go from here."

Most Republicans have rejected the idea of a scheduled withdrawal of troops. While constituents are growing concerned increasingly about the open-endedness of the war, GOP lawmakers said in interviews last week that they do not want US troops to leave Iraq before the job is finished.

White House spokesman Tony Snow acknowledged the public worries yesterday, but said a pullout would be a ``disaster" for both the United States and Iraq.

``The president understands people's impatience . . . how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?" Snow said on CNN.

``But you cannot conduct a war based on polls . . . and what's been interesting is that most people realize that simply pulling out would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster, not merely for the people of Iraq but the larger war on terror," Snow said.

Democrats largely are united in the desire to bring an end to the increasingly unpopular war, but divided over the best way to do it -- a schism Republicans have sought to exploit ahead of what is shaping up as a harsh battle for control of Congress this fall.

``Like too many Democrats, it strikes me they are ready to give the green light to go to war, but when it gets tough and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running," White House adviser Karl Rove said in a speech in New Hampshire last week. ``They may be with you at the first shots, but they are not going to be there for the last tough battles. They are wrong, and profoundly wrong, in their approach."

Representative John Murtha , a decorated war veteran and initial Iraq war supporter who has since called for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, shot back at Rove yesterday.

``He's making a political speech. He's sitting in his air-conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, `Stay the course.' That's not a plan. I mean, this guy -- I don't know what his military experience is, but that's a political statement," Murtha said on NBC's ``Meet the Press" yesterday.

``We've got to change direction, that's what we have to do. You can't, you can't sit there in the air-conditioned office and tell these troops they're carrying 70 pounds on their back inside these armored vessels and hit with IEDs every day, seeing their friends blown up, their buddies blown up, and he says, `stay the course.' Yeah, it's easy to say that from Washington, D.C.," Murtha added.

Rove had a student deferment and did not serve in Vietnam, which Senator John Kerry criticized Rove for during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, will press ahead this week with his separate amendment to pull virtually all US troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, said his spokeswoman, April Boyd.

Kerry's binding amendment to a Department of Defense authorization bill garnered six votes when it came up last week, but Boyd said the senator hopes to put pressure on the administration to come up with an exit strategy.

``We're not getting into whip counts" of how many senators will vote for Kerry's amendment, she said. ``This is about saying we need to set a date and we need to withdraw ."

About 130,000 US troops are in Iraq. The US military death toll since the 2003 invasion reached 2,500 last week, and the costs of the war hit $320 billion this year.

 

[CSM]

I would offer the same criticism of Murtha and Kerry that they spew of Rove...easy to talk about their plan when sitting on their asses in their cushy offices. Anyone who thinks we can effectively strike at the terrorists in Iraq from Okinawa suffers from terminal rectal cranial inversion.

 

[Hobbit]

I would offer the same criticism of Murtha and Kerry that they spew of Rove...easy to talk about their plan when sitting on their asses in their cushy offices. Anyone who thinks we can effectively strike at the terrorists in Iraq from Okinawa suffers from terminal rectal cranial inversion.

Is that Murtha or Kerry?