Feingold Rejects Compromise, Pushes Exit Strategy (by John Nichols for The Nation)

BLOG | Posted 05/09/2007 @ 09:58am
Feingold Rejects Compromise, Pushes Exit Strategy


Fifty-seven percent of Americans say that Congress should not compromise with President Bush in the Iraq War funding fight. That's the number that, according to a new CNN poll, wants Congress to give Bush another bill with a withdrawal timetable.

Unfortunately, not all the Democrats on the Hill want to push back quite that hard. There is serious talk of giving Bush a substantial portion of the money with no strings attached and then returning to the issue later this year.

Such a move would highlight the failure of all the major players to step up to the challenge the Iraq imbroglio poses.

For far too long, neither the Bush White House nor the Congress has seemed to be fully prepared to take responsibility for the war in Iraq. Bush won't admit his misdeeds and change course. But Congress, which gave Bush the power to launch the attack, has been far too slow in acknowledging its error in trusting the president's claims about weapons of mass destruction and other threats -- and even slower in taking responsibility for that error by using the power of the purse to constrain Bush's continued war making.

But U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, is doing his best to get Congress to take the bold step that is necessary.

...(snip)...

He's got more company now that the war has so clearly degenerated into the disaster he predicted almost five years ago.

But Feingold isn't resting on his laurels and "I-told-you-sos." His work to attach the Feingold-Reid measure to the Iraq supplemental spending bill represents the most direct and potentially meaningful challenge to a Republican president and a Democratic Congress that have yet to take responsibility for a war that kills an Iraqi every ten minutes, kills an American every ten hours and empties another two billion dollars from the U.S. Treasury every ten days. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=193588

I am glad Feingold is showing leadership in the Senate on the war.