Committee Approves Anti-Iraq Plan Resolution
DODD
Norwalk Hour
Anthony Rotunno
Boston University Washington News Service
1/24/07
WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 – In a rebuke of President Bush, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted Wednesday to voice its disapproval of his plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by 21,500.
The committee adopted a non-binding resolution by 12-9 only after voting down a proposal by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., that would have legally capped the number of troops deployed to Iraq.
“Escalation is a mistake,” Dodd said, arguing that his resolution would have allowed us “to be part of a conversation in a meaningful way and invite the president to respond and not ignore us.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., called the committee-approved resolution “an attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake.”
The resolution, which states that it is not in the nation’s best interest to “deepen its military involvement in Iraq,” will be debated by the entire Senate next week.
“There is no strategy,” Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said of the president’s plan. “We better be damn sure we know what we’re doing before we put 22,000 lives back into that grinder.”
Hagel, a co-sponsor of the successful resolution, was the only Republican to vote for it. The rest of the votes were divided by party, although some Republican committee members said that they shared the Democrats’ skepticism of President Bush’s plan.
“I’m not persuaded adding troops is the right thing to do,” said Sen. Robert Corker, R-Tenn. “Many mistakes have been made on the part of this administration.”
Dodd had proposed a binding amendment that would have required the number of troops in Iraq be frozen at 137,500 – the number there before Bush announced his escalation plan – and mandated that the president acquire explicit congressional authorization before implementing any subsequent troop surges.
Dodd said that his legislation would have forced the president to listen to Congress’s views on Iraq. “The amendment will make the President answer us…and answer the people we represent,” he said before the vote.
Biden shot down Dodd’s amendment, saying its passage would be “just ratifying the status quo.” It was later rejected, 15-6. Biden, also a co-sponsor of the successful resolution, is one of many Democrats, like Dodd, who have already announced they will run for president in 2008.
“The president, under Sen. Dodd’s proposal, can proceed with his mission [to escalate],” Biden said. “Just setting the level of troops sends the wrong message.”
“Sen. Dodd’s resolution gives us the chance to express ourselves – it sends a clear message to the commander in chief that we want a political resolution in Iraq,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, who supported the measure, said.
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., also proposed an amendment that would have supported an increase of American in troops in Iraq’s Anbar province, but not in Baghdad. His amendment lost, 17-4.
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