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Democratic retreat on Iraq?

Posted: Thursday, September 06, 2007 3:29 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: , ,

From NBC's Ken Strickland and Mike Viqueira
It's clear now that Democratic leaders on both sides of the Capitol are moving towards dropping their insistence on a end date deadline for completing troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Senate leaders are likely to move a defense measure on the week of the 17th that essentially calls for a withdrawal to begin later this year, but drops language that would require completion by April 30, 2008. "We are not backing off anything," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters today, while adding in the next breath that "we need 60 votes" -- a threshold that they have been repeatedly unable to meet this year on war votes. "There is nothing off the table on Iraq," he said.

Meanwhile, Speaker Pelosi is signaling that she, too, will allow votes on a similar measure in the House by the end of the month, as well as a measure that would require the Bush Administration to come forward with a redeployment plan within 60 days, according to a House leadership source.

It wasn't supposed to work out this way. Throughout the spring Democrats had talked of how they were hammering away at Republican resistance on deadline legislation, speaking of the "arc" that votes had progressively taken towards the Democratic position. September was to be a watershed moment for congressional action on the war, with the expectation that Republicans were going to start bucking the White House. The strategy was to change Republican votes, not to change the underlying legislation.

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WAHHH WAHHH WAHHH...you liberals are bad, WAHHH WAHH WAHHH dems suck.....WAHHH WAHH WAHHH....dems troll for gay sex in public restrooms....oops that was  Craig, a  Republican.  WAHHH WAHHH WAHHH...liberals go and use protitutes....oooops that was Vitter, a Republican.  WAHHH WAHHH WAHHH...dems go marry trophpy wives 30 years younger...oops thats Fred Thompson, a Republican.   WAHHH WAHHH WAHHH...liberals have affairs and announce to his present wife and children via a news conference that he's divorcing them...oops thats Guliani. WAHHH WAHHH WAHHH...dems can have multiple wives if they want to...ooops thats Mitt Romney.  WAHHH WAHHH WAHH dems marry their cousins...ooops thats Guliani again.

Nothing is black and white, folks. There is nothing you can say about one party that isn't true about the
other party. And neither party gives a damn about you and me!  We are cash cows!


And we should never forget the 47 Blue Dog democrats that may as well be republicans on most issues - they typically side with Bush and are consistently pro-war.


Interesting.  47 Blue Dogs?  Dems only have 50 votes, 51 with Lieberman.  Who are these Blue Dogs you speak of?

Here's a list of Democrat Senators that wouldn't vote for anything Bush wanted even if it would save their lives"

Boxer
Clinton
Durbin
Feingold
Feinstein
Harkin
Kennedy
Kerry
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Murray
Obama
Reid
Schumer
Webb

16 hard core left wingers.

Matt - What is this list of yours based on?  
Sorry, but the reason the Dems are hedging their bets right now is because if you pull out now Iraq goes into a death spiral that the GOP can point to in the general election in 2009. They are finally being smart about this.
I never voted for the current president (a McCain Republican here), and it seems that we can safely say that maybe we shouldn't have invaded Iraq, or we should have had a more realistic view of post-invasion Iraq. Although I still find it laughable how a psycho like Saddam can have so many liberal friends. However, we need to act like grown-ups and take responsibility for the people of Iraq. If we leave now, we are condemning hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to death, civil war, and years of instability. My respect for Dems who are willing to talk smart instead of pandering to the radical leftist element in their party only grows. They realize what Republicans didn't - neither the radical left, nor right, speak for the vast majority of Americans.
The Democrats were elected to turn things around and get us out of Iraq.  The Senate, House, and President seem to forget that they are their to do the will of the people, not the will of corporate greed.  It is time to vote them all out and impeach the people responsible for the suffering that has been caused to the Iraquie's as well as the Americans.
Sorry, my friend, but it is no longer "Bush's War."  Since the "new" congress took office in January, it has become the Bush-Democrats War.  
The Dems were elected to end the war (and corruption).  Instead they have co-opted both dead bodies (and pork).  They are the War Whores and remain in majority Bush's poodles
Sorry, my friend, it can no longer be called "Bush's War."
The Dem majority took office in January.  Their charge was to end the war.  They have aided and abetted in expanding the war.  And have done so for their political agenda.  If your child gets killed in Iraq, do you really care if it was to profit Mr Bush & Mr Cheney's oil or to profit the politcal agenda of the Dems?
It is now the "Bush-Dem War."  The Dems in the House and Senate, as Mr Bush and the Reps, have slapped their consituents in the face, with the dead bodies of their -- not the elected officials' -- children.
Democrats are losers! They are shrouded in Defeat. A Dam good thing for it. They are hopeless and weak.

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane" -Marcus Aurelius

Run Away Run Away; Escape from the Democrats!!!
It is not Bush's War. It has never been Bush's War. IT IS WAR!!! War came to us as a country. You idiots!!! I hate war more than any of you. I have fought in one. We, as a nation, need to chase our enemies and crush them. THERE IS NO COMPROMISE WITH FOR VICTORY!!! After VICTORY; you idiots can have all the "Inquisitions" you want.
Wow ...I can just feel the love on this page. All those Democrats who are showing their true Democrat colors.

A true Democrat harkens back to the 1830's - when they believed slavery was okay and black people were sub-human, not capable of having freedom.  The Democrats resistance to eliminating slavery caused a Civil War that killed 600,000 people in a nation of 30 million.  (That's 2% of the population.)

After loosing the Civil War, the Democrats were the insurgency that terrorized the freed slaves (think KKK).  Once they got back in power in Congress, they cancelled out a Civil Rights Bill that the Republicans had passed.  Not until 90 years later, with more Democrats OPPOSING the 1964 Civil Rights Act than Republicans did a new bill get passed.

Now - the same party thinks that the Iraqi people are sub-human and don't deserve liberation and a chance for freedom.  The mantra is that Saddam Hussein should have been left in power.  Of course, they want to ignore that Saddam was supporting terrorists world-wide.  They want to ignore that Saddam had a terrorist training camp that included a plane fuselage to practice take-overs in flight (Salmon Pak).  

The Democrats, like in the 1830's and 1880's - are racist bigots who want the world to grant them everything (health care, high minimum wages, socialist government, etc.) ...and the rest of the world can go to hell.  Genocide ..they can't see it because their eyes are shut!

The Democrats ignore all the real reasons for taking out Saddam Hussein - and they are self-hating, American hating people who don't give a damn about the very principles that John F. Kennedy stated when he said:  "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

All President Bush has done is to try to protect our nation from terrorist attacks, and to ensure the survival and success of liberty abroad.  Why make him out to be an ogre?  He is an honest and caring man.  I can't say the same about those who would tolerate evil to remain in order to challenge the policies of President Bush.
Any way to impeach these whiny Bush haters. You don't have the votes you dhims!
They can not back up their message, never have, we are in this together. It is time for politics to be put aside and finally do what they voted to do in '03. History always has a way of telling the truth, Bush will not be the villian in 10 or 20 years, no that distinction will belong to congress.
Nice to see that the usual 'progressive' suspects are out in force to do the usual whining, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The BDS is strong in these.

You know what Bush really has that allows him to do whatever he wants to do ?

It's YOU.

If he has people like Carmen,Dem,Gordon,Utahreb, James J Breitfeller, and of course the IMPEACH Bush & Cheney delusionals, against him how can he ever lose ? You make him look truly profound every time you say ANYTHING.

As Pogo once said--- 'We have met the enemy and he is US.'

Bush must laugh at you guys each and every day. Everyone else does. I'm laughing now.

"Dems promised to END THE WAR and IMPEACH BUSH". Every time I hear the "Bush lied, kids died" and the "Impeach Bush" mantras bleated out from the left like the sheep in George Orwell's Animal Farm, I have asked the same question, to wit: please cite exactly what laws were broken by President Bush.  Some specifics, beyond the stale "he misled the country into war" would be helpful.  Also, if anyone could cite specific statutes from the United States Code or the Code of Federal Regulations, that would be actually helpful to the debate.

Further, we should revisit the whole "Bush misled the country" argument.  Few on the left seem willing to remember that, at the time that the Senate overwhelmingly authorized military action (including votes from Democratic heroes Clinton, Kerry and Edwards), the Seate was presented with the same intelligence that the Administration had.  Which, by the way, was the same intelligence that many other nations' intelligence services were presenting, not just our own.  (As an aside, perhaps if some of you wish to scream about intelligence failures, maybe you should ask the Clintons why the CIA human intelligence force was slashed so radically in the years leading up to 9/11.  But I digress.)  Based upon the intelligence presented, and based upon the Hussein regime's history of violating U.N. mandate after U.N. mandate with the U.N. unwilling to do anything about it, the Senate authorized the use of force to remove the Hussein regime. If anyone could cite an actual, impeachable offense here, please do so.  Apparently Pelosi and Reid (who I am embarrassed to say represents my state) have not been able to come up with one, or else the impeachment process would have begun by now.    
M. Vineyard tells wonderful tales.  However, it was not the Democrats resistance to ending slavery that caused the Civil War - it was the South's desire to break apart from the Union and establish its own country, slavery and all.  The Civil War was fought not to abolish slavery but to hold together the nation.  

The Democrats to whom M. Vineyard is referring are more commonly known as Southern Democrats.  There was a time when you had to be a Democrat to get elected in the South, so even the conservatives put on the Dem mask and campaigned.  As it turned out, the South was pretty damn conservative; they had just always voted Democrat, and continued to do so until after the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act when many of them abandoned the Democratic party in favor of the GOP, which prompted many Democratic legislators to jump ship as well and finally embrace their conservative, Republican selves.  

This was largely brought about by the fact that in the 1950's and 1960's, the northern Democrats (much more liberal in their thinking) battled to regain some power from these conservative Southern Democrats, and did so via a series of reforms in Congress that changed such things as how a committee chair is determined.  Many of those Congressmen who had been the chair of a committee for decades were ousted from that position, and the new generation of Democrats took over.

But I guess M. Vineyard doesn't want to talk about any of that.  
Carrie: And yet it was your ''liberal thinking'' Democrats in Lincolns day that pushed for a separate peace with the South and demanded that Lincoln end the war. Some things,it would appear,never change. Your ''new generation'' of Democrats includes Byrd and until recently, Hollings,both of who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
the democratic are the way to go because we know whats going on in this world.
the democratic are the way to go because we know whats going on in this world.


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