Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden called out Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Joe Lieberman and all those stopping debate and a vote on a pending Iraq War resolution.
Biden said to them, “Iraq dominates our national life. It is on the minds of tens of millions of Americans. It shapes the lives of hundreds of thousands of our men and women in uniform and their families.”
Biden is right — but it’s going to be a close call securing the 60 votes needed to shut down an effort to preempt ANY debate (written before the vote).
From Biden’s statement (click here to watch video clip):
This bill, like the Biden-Hagel-Levin-Snowe bill makes three things clear. First, Iraq needs a political settlement to end the sectarian violence. Second, the United States must work with other nations to develop a “regional, internationally-sponsored peace and reconciliation process for Iraq.” Third, the mission of US armed forces should be confined to counter-terrorism, training, and maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq. The mission should not include policing a sectarian civil war. That will require significantly fewer troops than we have in Iraq now.
As I said at the outset, this is a first step. But it can set the foundation for everything that follows. If the President does not listen to the majority of Congress and the majority of the American people, we will look at other ways to turn the surge around.
Even if we succeed in that effort, we still need to turn our overall Iraq policy around. We need a strategy that can produce a political settlement in Iraq. That’s the only way to stop Shiites and Sunnis from killing each other and to allow our troops to leave Iraq without trading a dictator for chaos.
Watching C-Span now. The vote seems close.
Damn. . .not close at all. The effort to move to the Warner-Levin Iraq War Resolution was stopped 49 to 47.
This may hurt right now, but it’s getting easier and easier to figure out which Members of Congress to support and which to purge.
— Steve Clemons
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