Allen and Michaud were among the 122 Democrats, 5 Republicans, and Sanders voting in favor of the Woolsey Amendment. Nancy Pelosi, incredibly, voted nay. In total, 79 Democrats joined the GOP for a final tally of 300 to 128.[T]his week, almost 70 percent of lawmakers (including, pathetically, top members of the Democratic leadership) in the House of Representatives voted against a bipartisan, non-binding resolution asking the President to submit a plan to Congress explaining an exit strategy from Iraq.
Possibly more insulting than the vote was the fact that Republicans actually equated asking for an exit strategy to abandoning America's troops.
The amendment is worded in such a way that it can be interpreted as asking for an exit ASAP, not an exit plan ASAP. The two are qualitatively different, and I think the Democrats would have been wiser to go for clear-cut, neutral language demanding a plan and an explanation of what victory will look like.
Still, the fact that we got a majority of dems and five Republicans - four of them southerners - to demand an account is a good sign. The subject is guaranteed to keep coming up. Another good omen: Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), one of the most conservative members of Congress and the man who insisted on renaming our national vegetable as "freedom fries," has changed his mind on the legality of the war and was the only GOP member to speak in support of the amendment.
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UPDATE: The US Army War College has just published an assessment of Bush's post-9/11 strategy, calling it ill-defined and saying that "fundamental choices can no longer be deferred."
2 comments:
p.s.
Just read the dkos diary. Thanks. What a breath of fresh air.
This is also the way good teachers deal with students who want to divert, procrastinate and otherwise sabotage a class, and good mothers get their four year-olds to get out of the pool.
If only I'd read it in time to be a good mother!
Ah well, there's always grandchildren....
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