Edwards and Vilsack Stand Up
TM NOTE… I\’ve just found the headline of the morning: Lame duck president sends sitting ducks to Iraq. Beautiful.
We\’ve been here before. Listen but verify, then act. Symbolism is not enough.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are coming completely unglued.
Senate Republicans, dreading President Bush\’s prime-time address tonight
calling for more U.S. troops in Iraq, emerged from their weekly party luncheon
yesterday displaying more dance steps than the Joffrey Ballet.\”We should listen to what the president has to say,\” proposed Sen.
John Warner (R-Va).\”I want to hear the president\’s plan,\” Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)
concurred.\”I want to see what he\’s proposing before I make dramatic statements,\”
an unusually skittish Trent Lott (Miss.), the No. 2 Republican, told a thick
knot of reporters.And you didn\’t want to get too close to Sen. George Voinovich (Ohio). \”We
need more information, okay?\” he insisted.But the Republicans\’ principal dancer yesterday was Sen. John Sununu (N.H.),
perhaps the most endangered of all GOP senators in 2008. \”We haven\’t
discussed \’the plan,\’ \” he maintained. \”That would suggest that
we were told exactly what is going to be announced tomorrow, and that is certainly
not the case.\”Reporters had barely digested that one when Sununu offered a second disavowal:
\”I don\’t really know what they\’re thinking about proposing, so given
that, it wouldn\’t be wise for me to suggest that I do or don\’t know whether
their conditions are appropriate.\”Is the escalating White House headed for a conflict with the antiwar Congress?
\”I don\’t know. I don\’t know,\” Sununu repeated. \”Because we
don\’t know what the president has proposed.\”Sununu kept punting, for a painful 15 minutes before reporters released him.
\”There\’s clearly no one else in the hall to talk to,\” he quipped.The Democrats, by contrast, were happy to talk. Though utterly divided on
a solution for Iraq, pretty much every Democrat lined up in opposition to
Bush\’s plan to \”surge\” thousands more troops into Iraq. And they
were itching for a chance to put Republicans on the spot with a symbolic but
toothless vote opposing the surge.For
GOP Senators, Bush\’s Next Step in Iraq Means a Delicate Dance
John Edwards understands what needs to be done and has come out unequivocally
and state it.
George Bush\’s expected decision to adopt the McCain Doctrine and
escalate the war in Iraq is a grave mistake.\”The new Congress must intercede to stop Bush from stubbornly sticking
to the same failed course in Iraq and refuse to authorize funding for an escalation
of troops. They should make it clear to the President that he will not get
any money to put more of our troops in harm\’s way until he provides a plan
to turn responsibility of Iraq over to the Iraqi people and to ultimately
leave Iraq. George Bush wants to dig a deeper hole, but we need to climb out.\”The situation in Iraq demands a political solution — the Iraqi people
must take responsibility for their country. Escalating the war in Iraq, which
our own generals agree won\’t help, sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people,
to the region, and the world. In order to get the Iraqis to take responsibility
for their country, we must show them that we are serious about leaving, and
the best way to do that is to actually start leaving and immediately withdraw
40-50,000 troops. Once the U.S. starts leaving, the Iraqi people and other
regional powers will be forced to step up and engage in the search for a political
solution that can bring an end to sectarian violence and allow reconstruction
to take hold, creating — as should have been done long ago — Iraqi jobs
for Iraqis.\”
The troops in the field in Iraq will continue to be funded, but the escalation
must be stopped. Tom
Vilsack, another presidential hopeful, weighed
in as well: \”Now the president and the Congress are poised to make
a big mistake even bigger.\”
Senator Ted
Kennedy stated it eloquently yesterday, which I covered on my radio show.
The American people are behind us, with 61%
against to 36% for it.
Then there\’s the reality that past surges have failed.
\”Operation Together Forward\” (June-October 2006):
In June the Bush administration announced a new plan for securing Baghdad
by increasing the presence of Iraqi Security Forces. That plan failed, so
in July the White House announced that additional American troops would be
sent into Baghdad. By October, a U.S. military spokesman, Gen. William Caldwell,
acknowledged that the operation and troop increase was a failure and had \”not
met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.\”
[CNN, 12/19/06. Washington Post, 7/26/06. Brookings Institution, 12/21/06.]Elections and Constitutional Referendum (September-December 2005):
In fall of 2005, the Bush administration increased troop levels by 22,000,
making a total of 160,000 American troops in Iraq around Iraq\’s constitutional
referendum and parliamentary elections. While the elections went off without
major violence these escalations had little long-term impact on quelling sectarian
violence or attacks on American troops. [Brookings Institution, 12/21/06.
www.icasualties.org]Constitutional Elections and Fallujah (November 2004-March 2005):
As part of an effort to improve counterinsurgency operations after the Fallujah
offensive in November 2004 and to increase security before the January 2005
constitutional elections, U.S. forces were increased by 12,000 to a total
of 150,000. Again there was no long-term security benefit. [Brookings Institution,
12/21/06. New York Times, 12/2/04.]Massive Troop Rotations (December 2003-April 2004): As
part of a massive rotation of 250,000 troops in the winter and spring of 2004,
troop levels in Iraq were raised from 122,000 to 137,000. Yet the increase
did nothing to prevent Muqtada al-Sadr\’s Najaf uprising and April of 2004
was the second deadliest month for Americans. [Brookings Institution, 12/21/06.
www.icasualties.org. USA Today, 3/4/04]
Many say we should dump the Iraq war and his plans for escalation in Mr. Bush\’s
lap and leave it there.
But a symbolic vote as our soldiers die and we begin spending another
$6.8 billion is simply not enough.
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