Poll: Bush Approval Rating At New Low - Page 3

carrie721 · #31 01-24-2007, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a nonbinding measure saying President Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq is "not in the national interest of the United States.

from cnn.com

That is HUGE and humiliating for W. But, that's what you get when you ignore every shed of coherent advice your given.

i just read this. how much clout will this nonbinding measure have, though? sure it's humiliating, but will this change anything?

strandinthewind · #32 01-24-2007, 01:48 PM

Democrats move to condemn Bush plan for troop buildup
Story Highlights• Senate panel expected to pass resolution opposing more troops in Iraq

• GOP Sen. Hagel fears putting "22,000 more Americans into that grinder"
• Resolution, to be debated next week, would not stop plan to increase troops
• Eight Republican senators on record opposing Bush plan

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats took the first step toward a wartime repudiation of President Bush on Wednesday, a step designed to condemn the deployment of more troops to Iraq.

Democrats convened the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to endorse legislation declaring that sending additional troops to Iraq is "not in the national interest."

"We better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the only Republican on the committee to announce support for the measure.

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, the panel's chairman, said the legislation is "not an attempt to embarrass the president. ... It's an attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake with regard to our policy in Iraq."

Less than one month after taking control of Congress, there was little doubt Democrats had the votes to prevail. They hold 11 seats on the committee, to the Republicans' 10.

The full Senate is scheduled to begin debate on the measure next week, although Biden has said he is willing to negotiate changes in hopes of attracting support from more Republicans.

Even Republicans opposed to the measure expressed unease with the revised policy involving a war that has lasted nearly four years, claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops and helped Democrats win control of Congress in last fall's elections.

"I am not confident that President Bush's plan will succeed," said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, senior Republican on the committee.

But he also said he would vote against the measure. "It is unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or modification of our Iraq policy."

"The president is deeply invested in this plan, and the deployments ... have already begun," Lugar added.

He suggested a more forceful role for Congress, and said lawmakers must ensure the administration is "planning for contingencies, including the failure of the Iraqi government to reach compromises and the persistence of violence despite U.S. and Iraqi government efforts."

Impassioned debate
Divisions over the war were on clear display as the committee met.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said he wanted to change the measure to say flatly that the troop level in Iraq "may not exceed the levels" in place before Bush announced his new policy.

Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin, chastised fellow lawmakers, accusing them of being reticent to respond to Bush's plans. He said he would seek legislation cutting off funds for any troop buildup.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota, said he wanted the nonbinding measure changed to allow Bush to increase troops in the Anbar province in western Iraq, but not in Baghdad, where the sectarian violence is particularly fierce.

Hagel's remarks were among the most impassioned of the day, and he was unstinting in his criticism of the White House.

"There is no strategy," he said of the Bush administration's war management. "This is a Ping-Pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans; they're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder."

A Vietnam veteran, he fairly lectured fellow senators not to duck a painful debate about a war that has grown increasingly unpopular as it has gone on. "No president of the United States can sustain a foreign policy or a war policy without the sustained support of the American people," Hagel said.

Number of Republicans opposed to plan grows
At least eight other Republican senators say they now back legislative proposals registering objections to Bush's decision to boost U.S. military strength in Iraq by 21,500 troops.

The growing list -- which includes Sens. Gordon Smith, George Voinovich and Sam Brownback -- has emboldened Democrats, who are pushing for a vote in the full Senate by next week to rebuke the president's Iraq policy.

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, Bush urged skeptical members of Congress to give the plan a chance to work.

Many lawmakers remained reluctant.

"I wonder whether the clock has already run out," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. She said she was worried that U.S. troops in Iraq are already perceived "not as liberators but as occupiers."

Former New York Mayor Giuliani expresses support
Bush did get a word of support from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of the 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls.

"I believe we should give the president the support to do this. I want us to be successful in Iraq," he said Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show. "I know how important it is to the overall war on terror. Success in Iraq means a more peaceful world for America, it means a victory against terrorists. Failure in Iraq means a big defeat against terrorists and the war on terror is going to be tougher for us."

But Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, appearing on the same show, said, "I think all of us are talking about a phased redeployment which would leave American troops in the region to send a strong message, not only to the Iraqi government that we want to help them, but also to neighbors, like Iran, that we're not abandoning the field."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/....ap/index.html

strandinthewind · #33 01-24-2007, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carrie721

i just read this. how much clout will this nonbinding measure have, though? sure it's humiliating, but will this change anything?

IMO what it chages is the vast support the R's have given W. Clearly, that is ending. Sadly, not before we are a nation in financial straights and our brave men and women are dying or being hurt as a result. Oh well, at least Halliburton made a few billion

carrie721 · #34 01-24-2007, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

IMO what it chages is the vast support the R's have given W. Clearly, that is ending. Sadly, not before we are a nation in financial straights and our brave men and women are dying or being hurt as a result. Oh well, at least Halliburton made a few billion

i'm still skeptical that this will curtail bush/cheney/rove's bloodthirstiness, but we shall see.

SuzeQuze · #35 01-24-2007, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hayley

oh, it's so awesome! you need to see it from the beginning. i think target had season 1 & 2 on sale for like 17.99 each, although that might be ending this weekend.

Well I just might pick up 1 if it is still on sale. I have to go there to exchange GG Season 6 anyway since the last disc won't play. I've been having the worst luck with DVDs and CDs not working lately! Does anyone else have this problem?

strandinthewind · #36 01-24-2007, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carrie721

i'm still skeptical that this will curtail bush/cheney/rove's bloodthirstiness, but we shall see.

I agree time will tell. The facts before us though indicate W moved the rhetoric to the middle in his SOTU speech as he did not mention any religious right issues, other than the war, which really goes beyond the whole "morally right thing to" schpeel. Will that continue - again time

strandinthewind · #37 01-24-2007, 04:25 PM

The man lives in LA LA LAND

Cheney: Talk of Iraq blunders, low credibility 'hogwash'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration's credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to question President Bush's plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, carried out a day after President Bush delivered his State of the Union address, the vice president was told that some Republicans in Congress "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."

To that Cheney responded: "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee defied President Bush on Wednesday and approved a resolution declaring that sending more troops to Iraq is "not in the national interest."

"We better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder," said Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, one of the harshest Republican critics of the plan. (Full story)

Cheney said the administration is committed to moving ahead with its plan to send more troops to secure Baghdad, even if Congress passes a resolution in opposition.

"It won't stop us," he said. "And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."

If U.S. forces were to pull out of Iraq, "We would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task ... that we don't have the stomach for the fight. That's the biggest threat."

Cheney added, "The notion that somehow the effort hasn't been worth it or that we shouldn't go ahead and complete the task is just dead wrong."

Bush's Iraq plan also calls for U.S. forces to help Iraq better equip its military and accelerate training of Iraqi troops. The Iraqi government plans to take full responsibility for the country's security by November.

Bush asked Congress and the public to give his plan to help the Iraqi government end sectarian violence "a chance to work."

"We went into this largely united," the president said during Tuesday's speech. "And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure." (Full story)

Two-thirds of the people surveyed in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released on the eve of the speech oppose the plan. The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday and was based on telephone interviews with 1,008 adult Americans. It has a sampling error of plus-or-minus 3 points.

Cheney said the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein was the right move.

"The world is much safer today because of it," the vice president said. There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it."

Cheney added that had Hussein been allowed to remain at the helm of Iraq, "he would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran."

Cheney acknowledged "ongoing problems" in Iraq, where an insurgency is blamed for dozens of Iraqi deaths each day and more than 3,000 U.S. military fatalities over the course of the nearly four-year-old war.

"There's problems, ongoing problems. But we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off," Cheney said.

He added, "We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, and the president's put a plan in place to do that."

Asked to describe the biggest mistake made by U.S. war planners, Cheney said: "I think we underestimated the extent to which 30 years of Saddam's rule had really hammered the population, especially the Shia population, into submissiveness. It's very hard for them to stand up and take responsibility, in part because anybody who's done that in the past have had their heads chopped off."

Asked about the pregnancy of his daughter Mary, who is in a relationship with a female partner, Cheney expressed irritation with his questioner.

"I'm delighted I'm about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf," he said. "And, obviously, I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you're out of line with that question."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/...ney/index.html