Feingold doing the Dixie Chix dance in the Green Zone

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032501003.html?nav=rss_world

.....Elsewhere in Iraq, police officers south of Baghdad found the bodies of at least 10 people shot to death with their hands bound. East of Baghdad, four people were killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb tore through their vehicle. And in the town of Mahmudiyah, police said Sunni insurgents fought for several hours with members of a Shiite militia loyal to influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leading to the detention of several insurgents.

.....With sectarian violence surging across the country since the bombing last month of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, each member of the U.S. delegation visiting Baghdad stressed the urgency of forming a new government. McCain pointed to a dearth of economic development but said he had been encouraged by reports of improvements in Iraq's security forces and a burgeoning rift between Iraqi and foreign insurgents. "The statistics that I see is that slow and steady progress is being made," the Arizona senator said.

Feingold, who recently called for the Senate to censure President Bush over a domestic surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, said he was dismayed not to hear any of the military commanders he met with mention al-Qaeda as a source of the problems in Iraq. The Bush administration and U.S. officials here often point to the radical group as a major source of instability in the country.

"There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here," Feingold said. McCain responded that he did "not want to get into a back-and-forth with one of my best friends."

"Russ could have been a lot more outspoken," said Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who was part of the visiting delegation. "There's always been with foreign policy an idea that debate stops at the shores. . . . At times today it didn't."



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=755644&mesg_id=755763

exact same thing that got the Dixie Chix's in trouble.

McCain, Feingold Air Views in Iraq
Visiting Legislators Debate U.S. Policy as Violence Rages

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 26, 2006; Page A14

BAGHDAD, March 25 -- The increasingly rancorous public debate in the United States over the war spilled into Iraq during a news conference Saturday with two visiting lawmakers who are outspoken in their opposing stands on the issue.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime supporter of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who voted against the invasion and has spoken out against the war ever since, said they had come not to air their divergent views but to urge Iraqi politicians to speed up the process of forming a government. But during questions from reporters, they argued -- cordially and pointedly -- over such issues as the timing of any withdrawal of U.S. troops and whether their continued presence is doing more harm than good.

Feingold said he believed "a large troop presence has a tendency to fuel the insurgency because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that the U.S. is here to occupy the country."

"I think that it's very possible that the sectarian differences are inflamed by the fact that U.S. troops are here," he continued, adding that their long-term presence "may well be destabilizing, not stabilizing."

on the ground talk in Irag.

.....With sectarian violence surging across the country since the bombing last month of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, each member of the U.S. delegation visiting Baghdad stressed the urgency of forming a new government. McCain pointed to a dearth of economic development but said he had been encouraged by reports of improvements in Iraq's security forces and a burgeoning rift between Iraqi and foreign insurgents. "The statistics that I see is that slow and steady progress is being made," the Arizona senator said.

Feingold, who recently called for the Senate to censure President Bush over a domestic surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, said he was dismayed not to hear any of the military commanders he met with mention al-Qaeda as a source of the problems in Iraq. The Bush administration and U.S. officials here often point to the radical group as a major source of instability in the country.

"There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here," Feingold said. McCain responded that he did "not want to get into a back-and-forth with one of my best friends."

"Russ could have been a lot more outspoken," said Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who was part of the visiting delegation. "There's always been with foreign policy an idea that debate stops at the shores. . . . At times today it didn't."

and R. :)