March 15, 2007: Specter Finds Himself In A Tunnel And He Doesn't Know How To Get Out

[12:41]
Arlen Specter, PA.  Specter's analogy for the U.S. and the Iraq war is this.  We are in a tunnel, and we can't see the end of the tunnel, much less any light at the end of the tunnel.  We want to get out of the tunnel, sure, but we're not quite sure how to get out.  Specter will oppose the Democratic Resolution (S.J. 9, a.k.a. the Reid resolution) calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops except for purposes of training and protection of U.S. assets.  Specter fears that the Senate is attempting a micromanagement of the war, a common Republican position.  But he has specific anecdotes he uses to explain why he thinks this.  He says that the Senate wants to set a deadline for U.S. troops being in Iraq but yet it has a hard time deciding even when itself is going to vote on these Iraq resolutions.  He observes that there were, as of this morning, four Iraq resolutions to be voted on, starting at 14:45 today.  Two of those resolutions, he says, he has not yet seen.  (This is true, there is a new Murray Resolution, and Warner penned a new resolution but has since withdrawn it—the Senate will vote on three Iraq resolutions starting at 14:45 this afternoon).

Specter said he would vote for the other two resolutions, one by Gregg, one by Murray, which he said weren't quite twins but were probably first cousins.  He did note that the Gregg resolution, which holds first that Congress would take no action to endanger the troops, could be interpreted as, in its second point, taking out of the hands of Congress the power to cut off troop funding for any military mission.  Specter said you don't have to read it this way, i.e. as prohibiting the Congress from doing what it did in 1974 when it limited the number of troops that could be present in Vietnam.  The Murray resolution likewise says that Congress will take no action endangering the troops and would ensure that troops get the care they deserve once home from the battlefield.  These are obvious points, Specter said, and no one will disagree with them.

He said that Congress needs to go back to the drawingboard on pinpointing its role in the Iraq debate.  He said he wanted to get some reports from the Dept. of Defense as to whether the troop surge was beginning to work.  He said he asked the Depts of Defense and State for such reports but got nothing.  He said that we probably need to engage in direct talks with Iran and Syria, which might lead to the kind of success we garnered recently through direct talks w/ North Korea.  He said he would not support an indefinite presence in Iraq but that the current resolutions weren't going to help us figure out what to do in Iraq.  He wants hard facts on the success of the surge and then go from there.


[11:54]
A quick update on Iraq rhetoric uttered today on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

James Inhofe (OK) is managing floor time for the minority.  With his time he chose to spoke about how horrible Saddam Hussein was (is?).  The way he talked you would have thought the U.S. was still trying to bring him down.  Inhofe talked about how he went to Kuwait in 1991 or so with the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. and the Ambassador's little girl.  They went to the Ambassador's house when they got to Kuwait.  Saddam had used it as a headquarters in Kuwait.  The little girl's room had been used as a torture chamber and there were body parts strewn about the room and hair and hands sticking to the walls.  The little girl wanted to see her dolls.  Saddam was brutal, Inhofe said.  He fed people into shredders, etc., etc.  And, oh yeah, there WERE weapons of mass destruction, Inhofe said, We know that because he used them etc. etc.  I don't know where Inhofe was going with all of this and it struck me that he is totally clueless as to what the Senate is debating.  It makes no sense to justify the current U.S. presence in Iraq (as the arbiter of a civil war) by talking about how terrible Saddam was.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, TX.  Hutchison spoke about the resolve of the United States, the Senate, and the American people.  Can you imagine, she asked, the Senate passing a resolution during World War II asking that U.S. troops be brought home?  And I'm thinking, No, I can't imagine that, why would I imagine that?  And how do you get off comparing Iraq to World War II?  Another Senator on another planet, talking about how we will "lose" the war if we draw down troops and Oh yeah, what message is this going to send to our troops if we vote to bring them home?  And I'm thinking, Who cares?  If they're being brought home they're probably going to be glad to be coming back home and even if they're pissed off that they're being brought home it's not like they're going to be less effective fighters because they wont' be fighting anymore.

Orrin Hatch (UT).  Hatch chose the Revolutionary War for his approach to contemplating our current struggle in Iraq.  Moral was bad too, then, when Washington was holed up in the Cold Winters of New Jersey but then Thomas Paine wrote this marvelous pamphlet called "Common Sense" and the country found its resolve and Washington fought hard at Princeton and Trenton etc. etc.  And we won our freedom!!!




Preview:
The Senate begins early, at 9:30 a.m. e.d.t.  A period of morning business will precede resumed consideration of S.J.Res.9, a joint resolution to revise United States policy on Iraq.