A Nuclear device set off in a large city?
Millions of dead Americans and others?
Financial losses that will make the Crash of '29 look like a picnic at the beach?
How much more until America wakes the hell up?
GOP still stand by Bush, blocking war plan
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
(07-11) 14:27 PDT Washington -- Republican congressional support for President Bush's Iraq war policy may be splintering, but enough GOP senators remained united with the president today to sidetrack legislation that would have made it harder to return military units to the war zone.
Republican leaders succeeded in blocking the proposal from coming up for a final vote, but seven of their members joined 48 Democrats and one independent in trying to require the Senate to consider the proposal of Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Still, the 56-41 vote left frustrated anti-war senators short of the 60 votes required to break the procedural filibuster.
But the focus was on the growing numbers of Republicans who turned away from the war now in its fifth year. With anti-war Democrats convinced that the public is on their side -- and the 2008 elections already looming
-- Democratic leaders are only too glad to force vote after vote in both houses of Congress requiring Republicans to support Bush or break with their president and support a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Democratic leaders also hope the repeated votes make the case to their party's base that they're carrying through on their 2006 campaign promise to try to end the war, but Republicans are blocking the effort.
The president wants Congress to hold off on any policy changes until Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, reports in September about how Bush's decision to increase combat troops has worked. But Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine became the latest Republican to break with the president when she and Hagel said they would co-sponsor a bill that calls for most American forces to leave Iraq by next April.
One other Republican, Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, had already endorsed the plan of Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. The Senate began debating the measure Wednesday as it continued its consideration of the fiscal 2008 military authorization bill.
The pressure on Republicans also will intensify in the House on Thursday when Democrats, bolstered by a new Gallup Poll showing that more than 70 percent of Americans support withdrawing almost all U.S. forces by next April, are scheduled to debate and vote on a measure calling for just that.
"If Republicans vote their constituencies, we are going to get over half of them,'' forecast House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.
After the Senate vote, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said anti-war forces in Congress have momentum, but she blasted the Republican Senate minority for blocking action on Webb's proposal to give military units longer rests in this country before being redeployed to Iraq.
"Except for a handful of Republicans, Republicans in the Senate are desperately clinging to the status quo. And this time, they have gone too far,'' Boxer said.
Of the seven Republicans who sided with the Democrats, six are up for re-election next year, if they choose to run again, and all of them are prime Democratic targets. They are Collins, Hagel, Smith, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire and John Warner of Virginia. Snowe also voted for the redeployment measure.
But three senior Republican members, Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio and Pete Domenici of New Mexico, opposed the measure despite saying the past few weeks that they think it's time to start withdrawing from Iraq.
A group of Republican senators met Wednesday with administration officials at the White House to warn that support for the war is ebbing and the president must change policy soon.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who also faces re-election next year ,was asked repeatedly if Wednesday's defections were a harbinger of future wider splits in his party ranks.
But he deflected the question.
"We're pleased to have succeeded'' in blocking the Webb-Hagel plan, McConnell said. "Many of us feel Gen. Petraeus should be given the opportunity to operate without our advice on this bill. Another assessment will come in September.''
In the House, leaders plan to vote before the August recess other anti-war steps, including a ban on permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, offered by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and a House version of the de-authorization of the war proposed by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., belittled a possible bipartisan proposal calling for implementation of last year's Iraq Study Group proposals. He said the time has past for such an idea.
"It doesn't have the teeth of a toothless tiger. It won't change one thing the president does,'' Reid said.
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/11/BAGDBQUMGU7.DTL
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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