The Associated Press January 25, 2007
Senate Nix For GI Plan
Panel Slaps W. On War
By Anne Flaherty
WASHINGTON - The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee dismissed President Bush's plans to increase troop strength in Iraq yesterday as "not in the national interest," an unusual wartime repudiation of the commander in chief.
The vote on the nonbinding measure was 12-9 and largely along party lines.
"We better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the sole Republican to join 11 Democrats supporting the measure.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the panel's chairman, said the legislation is "not an attempt to embarrass the president . . . It's an attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake with regard to our policy in Iraq."
The full Senate is scheduled to begin debate on the measure next week, and Biden has said he is willing to negotiate changes in hopes of attracting support from more Republicans.
House Democrats will hold a vote shortly after the Senate acts.
Votes against the war could have a bad effect on morale of the 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, experts say.
"It's not going to be helpful. It's got too much déjà vu all over again from Vietnam," said John Pike of the military think tank Globalsecurity.org.
"There are many in the military who will argue to this day that the U.S. was not defeated on the battlefields of Vietnam but in the halls of Congress. The reaction to these kinds of congressional votes is likely to be, 'after all the sacrifices we are making, the politicians back in Washington are up to their same old tricks,' " Pike added.
Republicans expressed unease with Bush's revised policy.
"I am not confident that President Bush's plan will succeed," said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, senior Republican on the committee. But he'll vote against the measure.
"It is unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or modification of our Iraq policy."
Additional reporting by Niles Lathem
© Copyright 2007, The Associated Press
