Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Still Not Enough: Senate Democrats Need 4 More GOP Senators

Word has it that the meeting between Bush’s National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley and GOP senators was rancorous and heated. Hadley did not get what he wanted, that is a complete cave-in to Bush’s request that they get back in line with him on Iraq.

Word is, Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Pete Domenici (R – N.M.) turned him down flat.

But there still weren’t enough about faces in today’s vote to halt debate and bring to the floor Jim Webb’s (D – Va.) SA 2001 amendment to HR 1585: a budget bill “to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2008 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.”

Webb’s amendment, viewed by many to be a very mild attempt to limit Bush’s ability to send troops to Iraq, got 7 Republican votes. That’s probably as many as will be possible unless some more jump over the fence. It is known that Olympia Snow (R-Maine) joined the group and will probably vote with Democrats on a resolution to withdraw troops by May 1st 2008.

But not enough senators voted to make sure that our troops had adequate rest and recuperation time between deployments.

“(1) IN GENERAL.--No unit or member of the Armed Forces specified in paragraph (2) may be deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom unless the period between the deployment of the unit or member is equal to or longer than the period of such previous deployment.”

Republican senators said that voting for this would hamper Bush in his attempt to prosecute the war in Iraq.

So in other words, in order for Bush to prosecute this war, he must send troops who have not had the rest and training between deployments that they need.

That’s not supporting the troops.

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