Webb Shifts Debate to Iraq, Urging Diplomacy to End War

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Saturday, October 7, 2006

Democratic Senate candidate James Webb said yesterday that it is time for the United States to seek an end to the fighting in Iraq through diplomacy, citing a new and dire assessment of the war effort by Virginia's senior senator, John W. Warner (R).

Webb sought to capitalize on Warner's appraisal of the war . . .

"They have a victory quite frankly in military terms," Webb said of soldiers in Iraq. "What we have to do is to move this into the political, diplomatic environment. All I've heard from Senator Allen is that we need a victory in Iraq, whatever that is."

Warner, who returned this week from Iraq, said parts of the country have "taken steps backwards." Webb, an early critic of the war, seized on Warner's comments as proof that Allen has failed to offer a clear plan for ending the war.

"It's pretty hard to even see what Senator Allen's position is," Webb said. "The only things he has been saying is basically the three- or four-word phrase that matches what the administration has been saying."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601634_pf.html

[oldboy101]

1. Sen. Warner now is saying, "Change the Course."

Bush and his supporters including Allen have all been parroting the phrase "Stay the Course." But now the highly respected Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after seeing for himself what the situation is in Iraq, says that unless things change for the better in the next couple of months we need to "Change the Course."

This completely defuses the Republican charges that Democrats are soft and are advocating "Cut and Run." Webb is smart to take advantage of this change as he is now doing. I think this might even put him in the lead over Allen.

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2. Iraq is his best issue

Allen's stay the course rhetoric isn't at all believable. Webb has the experience to back up what he says.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. But, Warner wants to wait 60 days - after the election.