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| Iraq |
| Lieberman Responds to Reid's Force Troop Withdrawal |
| 2007-11-13 |
| H/T The Corner "Congress should support our troops in Iraq, not undermine their heroic achievements by imposing a formula for failure." WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) issued the following statement today in response to the latest congressional effort to legislate a U.S. retreat from Iraq: "Over the past nine months, American forces have begun to achieve the kind of progress in Iraq that, until recently, few in Washington would have dared to imagine might be possible. "Working together with our increasingly capable Iraqi allies, U.S. troops under the command of General David Petraeus have routed al Qaeda in Iraq from its safe havens in Anbar province and Baghdad -- delivering what could well prove to be the most significant defeat for Osama bin Laden's terrorist network since it was driven from Afghanistan in late 2001. "As al Qaeda has been beaten into retreat in Iraq, security conditions across the country have begun to improve. Iraqi civilian casualties are dramatically down. IED attacks have plummeted, while mortar and rocket attacks are at an unprecedented twenty-one month low. The number of U.S. soldiers killed in action has fallen for five straight months and is now at the lowest level in nearly two years. And as a result, U.S. commanders on the ground have begun a drawdown in the number of U.S. forces in Iraq. "According to the BBC just this weekend: 'All across Baghdad... streets are springing back to life. Shops and restaurants which closed down are back in business. People walk in crowded streets in the evening, when just a few months ago they would have been huddled behind locked doors in their homes. Everybody agrees that things are much better.' "Unfortunately, congressional opponents of the war have responded to the growing evidence of progress in Iraq not with gratitude or relief, but with unrelenting opposition to a policy that is now clearly working. "Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, anti-war advocates in Congress have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of retreat and defeat in Iraq -- reluctant to acknowledge the reality of progress there. "Rather than supporting General Petraeus and our troops in the field, anti-war advocates in Congress are instead struggling to deny or disparage their achievements -- and are now acting, once again, to hold hostage the funding our troops desperately need and to order a retreat by a date certain and regardless of what is happening on the ground. "It bears emphasizing that none of the progress we see today in Iraq would have happened, had these same anti-war activists prevailed in their earlier attempts this year to derail General Petraeus' strategy. "In fact, throughout the past nine months, anti-war advocates in Congress have confidently and repeatedly predicted that General Petraeus' strategy would fail, and that the war in Iraq was 'lost.' "It is now clear they were wrong. "Rather than another ill-advised, misguided attempt to cut off the funding for our troops in the field, it is time for anti-war forces to admit that the surge is working and stop their futile legislative harassments. "It is deeply irresponsible for anti-war forces in Congress to hold hostage the funds that our men and women in uniform need to continue their successful efforts. Congress should support our troops in Iraq, not undermine their heroic achievements by imposing a formula for failure." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 Zero* for 40 for Representative Pelosi and Senator Reid. They can try making it 0 for 50, but how will that help them? * Of that 0, only one bill made it through both House and Senate, and the president vetoed that one. There weren't enough votes to override the veto. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-11-13 21:42 |
| #3 Îow that there is irrefutable evidence that victory is in our grasp, the dimmocrats must accelerate the surrender process in order to achieve power prior to that occurring. |
| Posted by: ÎÎÎÎÎÎÎΣ 2007-11-13 20:46 |
| #2 "Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, anti-war advocates in Congress have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of retreat and defeat in Iraq -- reluctant to acknowledge the reality of progress there." Sorry, Joe, but they're not "emotionally invested," they're politically invested. They know darned well what they're doing: stabbing our troops in the back to score cheap political points with the loathesome cretins who constitute the Democratic Party's current political "base." And they're traitors, each and every last one of them. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2007-11-13 18:34 |
| #1 Wonder what Joe will have to say when Reid tries this the next time. And there will be a next time. Reid and Pelosi are truly insane. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-11-13 17:28 |