February 1st, 2007 - Hagel Cosponsors Bipartisan Resolution Putting Senate on Record Opposing Additional U.S. Troops to Iraq
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) released the following statement today regarding his support for the revised Warner Resolution:
“After extensive hearings, negotiations, and debate, the Senate has taken an important step toward sending a clear bipartisan message against adding 21,500 new U.S. troops to Iraq. I have appreciated working with Senators Warner and Levin to meld our two different Congressional Resolutions into one bipartisan resolution. We approached Senator Warner several times to try and resolve the differences. Last night, we came together to produce this resolution. We have agreed to a responsible and constructive resolution that reflects America’s interests in Iraq and the Middle East.
“Next week’s debate will be important to the American people and put the Senate on record as to America’s future course in Iraq. War is the most important and serious issue Congress and the American people will ever deal with.”
Thursday, February 01, 2007
"Hagel Cosponsors Bipartisan Resolution Putting Senate on Record Opposing Additional U.S. Troops to Iraq"
Senator Hagel's office put this press release up on their site today:
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6 comments:
Good! I hope that the Senate can pass some version of this resolution, since it will be an important step in working out a path forward on this issue.
Just today, however, the Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that the number of additional troops to be deployed and the associated costs of that deployment may be much higher than initially reported. As reported in a story on Defensetech.org:
President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 -- more than double the number the President initially said.
That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes...
According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the President has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additional funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007. Of that, about $3.2 billion was supposed to go to the Army and Marines for their escalated activity.
But that figure appears to have been grossly underestimated. The CBO now believes "that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment."
Sending more troops to Iraq is nothing more than throwing more money and bodies at the problem. If those people wanted our help they would have stood up by now and took the reigns. They want us out. And I want us out. It's just not worth it; there is no payoff. And it's making things worse. If we had a leader like Chuck I think he could get us on the righ path.
According to USA Today, Hagel and other senators will be meeting with Bush at the end of the day today. This meeting illustrates why this new resolution is important: the President is forced to consider what leaders like Hagel are saying.
I appreciated one particular thing that President Bush had to say to the Democratic lawmakers at their congressional retreat today. As reported in this story:
Seeking to earn his bipartisan stripes, [Bush] also said that opposing him on the war - as many in the room do - does not mean "you don't share the same sense of patriotism I do."
"You know, I welcome debate in a time of war and I hope you know that," the president said. "These are tough times, but there's no doubt in my mind that you want to secure this homeland as much as I do."
The President's words here are certainly different from other people's which say that the bipartisan resolution somehow "emboldens the enemy"---that Senators who vote for the resolution will "desert the troops". It's a good quote to keep in mind in the ongoing debate of the Hagel candidacy.
Let me get this straight. He speaks out forcefully, even passionately, that it's wrong to put our troops in the middle of the civil war in Iraq. He demands that every senator speak out, take a stand, on whether they support the resolution he has helped to craft. And then...then he votes against the resolution. No, wait. He votes against a vote on the resolution??? Wait, once again. Didn't he do much the same thing with his "passionate" words about the detention act? Didn't he say how we should not abandon the Geneva Conventions on torture? But then he went on to let the president have that one too. After today, Chuck Hagel means one thing to me: Class A Coward. With him, nasty Republican politics will win out everytime. George Bush and Mitch McConnell will not be denied, not by this coward. Guess the troops can just flip a coin. Life or death. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference to Chuck Hagel. From now on, we should watch what he does, not what he says.
Yesterday's vote to reject the motion to invoke cloture was just one of a series of procedural maneuvers regarding how the debate on this and other Iraq resolutions will be conducted. Hagel was not somehow voting against the very motion he's been supporting.
People should check out the video of Hagel's remarks from yesterday which was posted on this website. It is clear that he is passionate about having this debate and hopeful that the Majority and Minority leaders will be able to come to a conclusion soon about how to structure the debating and voting on this resolution.
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