Senators say Iraq must make progress or US troops will leave

[NNN0LHI]

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2006-04-25T215832Z_01_N25411863_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-CONGRESS.xml

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of senators pushed a resolution on Tuesday calling on President George W. Bush to tell Iraqi leaders they must meet their own deadlines to form a government as a condition for keeping U.S. forces there.

The Senate was expected to vote on the measure in coming days as it considered a $106.5 billion emergency spending bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and relief for the hurricane-battered U.S. Gulf Coast.

Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said the amendment "would put the Senate on record as urging the president, for the first time, to specifically link the continued presence of American forces to the Iraqis meeting their own self-imposed deadline."

Levin, top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, sponsored the measure with Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

[DanCa]

1. Well it sounds good but..

it would be better if we had never went into Iraq in the first place. Sigh - no one listens to me.

[Erika]

6. I do. There were a great many of us who saw W's invasion

as a farce. We saw no signs of WMD's. Israel had been written up for non compliance with the U.N. as much as Iraq.
We saw Saddam as a tin horn dictator with no threat to us. We scoffed at W's claims at his being a national threat. We saw the tremendous monetary advantage our invasion would give to W's biggest contributors. We were there. We screamed, but few heard us.

I've never been prouder of myself than knowing I thought the Iraqi invasion was insane and without reason.

[DanCa]

8. Well

I have to admit that a small part of me wanted to believe that a president wouldn't lie. I kept hoping that he would know something that the rest of us didnt' But after we started bombing the hell out of that country and they didn't fight back Dubya's full evil was revealled to me.
Like i said I didn't want us to go in, never did. But I kinda hoped that I would have been proven wrong and that America wasn't in the hands of an immature president with a god complex. I miss my optimissim.

[Erika]

9. It's sad, isn't it?

It's immensely sad.

[NNN0LHI]

10. I'm not afraid to admit that I fully expected the UN weapons inspectors...

...to be tripping over WMDs as they disembarked their plane to inspect the place.

But after weeks of not finding anything it became obvious Iraq was clean.

So what does idiot Bush do when he realizes there were no WMDs there?

The idiot illegally invades and occupies a sovereign country.

Don

[Erika]

2. Lost another local kid tonight while this ---- goes on

See at www.icasualties.org. Caldwell, Idaho

[DanCa]

3. Damn Damn Damn

How does the chimps sleep at night? Thanks for the link, allthough I wish it didn't exist. :hug:

[LiberalVoice]

5. In a very comfortable bed...

probably with french linens. Protected by the best bodyguards on the planet.

[ECH1969]

4. This might have had some effect when they were deadlocked

and Jaafari was refusing to give up his seat and nothing looked to be going forward.

But, with the public seeing that deadlock broken they are going look at this like cheap politics. I am sure it was a good idea when someone thought of it two or three weeks ago.

[TayTay]

14. If the deadlock is broken then that means that

the Iraqis are starting to form their government and they can start to take command of their own 'trained troops' and that the US can start to withdraw. Kerry mentioned that the Bushies wanted 272,000 Iraqi troops trained and when they hit that number, the US can 'stand down' cuz Iraqi's will be able to 'stand up' for their own country. According to the Happy Iraq News from the White House, the US has trained 240,000 Iraqi troops, so we should be able to leave soon. Right?

Form a government
Get the Iraqi troop levels up to a level needed to create security
Get the US out without permanent bases in Iraq

US troops come home. Isn't that what Bush said? (Hold them to this. Plus, I think that the Bush Admin is now in Baghdad asking the Iraqis to ask us to leave. It's a face saving maneuver. It might also be a false feint as the Bushies want those permanent bases.)

[wisteria]

7. This plan makes a hell of a lot of sense, Oh, wait, Kerry's plan

sounds almost identical to this one. Kerry has been speaking about his plan for about a month now.

[LittleClarkie]

11. Sounds a tad familiar, don't it

Sheesh.

[jimshoes]

12. What they're doing is

telling the Iraqi's is, "If you don't find a way to turn shit into finely spun gold, ... we're leaving"!

[ProSense]

13. Support withdrawal!

http://www.johnkerry.com/action/deadline/?sc=e.20060418