Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), right, and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) hold a news conference to reintroduce their amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill.
The faces of those backing the Iraq War are doing so for political purposes in attempting to keep the chance they will win a Republican victory in 2008 and/or keep their Senate seats. Among those that back the continued occupation of Iraq are the likes of Lindsay Graham (click here).
Lindsay Graham has been in the Senate forever and caters to a constituency mired in flag waving (click here) at the enormous cost of national security to the USA and deaths to the Iraqi people.
Graham's argument for voting against the Webb Amendment was because it would be ill advised based on the history of powers of the Commander and Chief. The reality of an illegal war didn't matter to Graham. The fact war fatigue replaces any good judgement in soldiers on the battlefield didn't matter to Graham. The fact that decency alone in maintaining family relationships dictates a change in the length of deployment didn't matter to Graham. THE ONLY aspect of the vote regarding this amendment which mattered to Lindsay Graham is the 'Southern Republican Flag Waving' politics of honoring the tradition of extending the war powers of the Commander and Chief.
Mr. Graham's statement reads:
...“The Webb amendment intended to take care of the troops. I don’t question anyone’s intent, but if you really want to take care of the troops let them win.
“The Webb amendment was one of the more ill-advised approaches to fighting the War on Terror. It was a historic constitutional infringement on the power of the Commander in Chief allowing Congress to micromanage troop rotations and deployments. The amendment would have hurt the brave young men and women fighting the War on Terror and set a terrible precedent for fighting future conflicts....
MICROMANAGE.
The Congress, according to Lindsay, attempted to micromanage the war. Amazing. Is Congress taking control of the battlefield out of the hands of the commanders? No. What the Webb-Hagel Amendment states is that soldiers have to be given sufficient time off the battlefield to recuperate from it's demands. The Webb-Hagle Amendment was to insure the soliders on the battlefield were in a sound state of readiness to serve with intact health and family relationships. The likes of Lindsay Graham would see any soldier deployed for any length of time simply because a Commander and Chief demanded it of OUR military.
The people whom voted against the Webb-Hagle Amendment are Anti-American, don't care about our soldiers, care only about winning a hopeless war and seek only to play politics with the lives of our troops and the lives of the people of Iraq. Lindsay and those like him need to be replaced in their Senate and House seats to allow a legislature that benefits this country's security rather than defeats it. The current war in Iraq is served by a vast minority of people both in military deployments and those that support it in the electorate of the USA. The politics of killing while compromising the security of this country has to stop and it has to stop by ridding the legislature of people voting based upon 'historical' principles rather than sound reasoning.
The fact of the matter is, without Bush's private contractors in Iraq, the USA military's burden will increase enormously, the deployments will be more lengthy and deployments will become toxic to the well being of our military and national security.
