Senator Hagel Takes a Swipe At Democrats and Defunding--Dangerous! Devastating!

[TwilightGardener]

Ran across this article today about a speech he gave to the Cato Institute, and while I agreed with most of it, I noticed this little gem:

--Hagel also warned against measures proposed by the Democratic Party. "What we don't want to do, because that is the most dangerous scenario, is cut off funding from our troops. That would be devastating to our image in the world," he said.--

http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Analysis/2007/07/20/analysis_hagel_wants_un_to_solve_iraq/5364/

I am not a proponent of defunding, myself (mostly because of the terrible political fallout that will be sure to follow, as evidenced by the above Republican's statement), but I could hardly care what the world thinks on this matter--our image is already lower than a snake's belly, and heck, the rest of the world is probably wondering why we haven't defunded already, so that's not really a good reason. But he nicely perpetuated the Right-Wing talking point about Democrats and defunding (We're willing to do something "dangerous" to the troops? Yeah, I don't think so, Chuck, that's YOUR party)--I guess he wanted to remind the folks at Cato which team he still played for.

I guarantee, however, that whoever the Republican nominee is, that guy will almost CERTAINLY make tons of hay out of Hillary and Obama's "defunding" votes in May. Especially considering the "Won't play chicken with the troops on funding" statement Obama made, and then he voted against the funding bill--a little flip-flop that I fear will come back to haunt him, as an Obama supporter. Maybe we should take this as a cautionary tale to NOT drive our top candidates into a position they are uncomfortable with?

[niceypoo]

1. "Our image in the world," is that of a fascist time bomb

Wouldn't want to tarnish that now, would we?

[TwilightGardener]

3. LOL! I'm not sure how ending the war by defunding would make us

seem any worse. Unless the world buys the RW propaganda that we'd be effectively swiping rifles and canteens out of our troops' hands and making them thumb a ride home.

[morningglory]

2. Just do what is right, I always say, and tell 'em why if they want to know.

[rzemanfl]

4. Withdrawing our troops from Iraq is going to be a bloodbath and

they will try to blame the Dems for it. Stabbed in the back and all that....

[TwilightGardener]

5. I agree with you on that--EVEN IF the withdrawal ends up being a Republican-sanctioned

idea. That may seem far-fetched now, considering the Levin Reed vote, but there may come a point where the 'Pubs decide to end the war to save their own hides in '08--then any bloodshed will still be blamed on Dems' insistence on giving up.

[Always AskWhy]

6. Problem is

we are damned if we do and damned if we don't!

[Inuca]

7. Give the man a break :-)

He gave that speech after the all-nighter, you can't expect him to be perfect. Seriously now, I think he is indeed against defunding. Once upon a time I received a Garfield mug as a present, inscribed with "I am not perfect, but certain parts of me are excellent". It kind of applies...

[TwilightGardener]

8. I thought the rest of the speech (as described by the article) was

good--but, reinforcing the "Dems don't support the troops" theme...well, I expect better of him--maybe I shouldn't!