Sen. Ken Salazar took the floor in the Senate this morning and urged his Republican colleagues to stop blocking debate on a resolution that disapproves of President Bush’s plan to dispatch more troops to the “quagmire” of Iraq.
Salazar opposes Bush’s plan, and has sided with some Senate Republicans and Democrats in trying to craft an alternative strategy. He is the co-author of a non-binding, bipartisan resolution that would put the Senate on record as opposed to Bush’s plans to commit a “surge” of 21,500 combat troops and thousands of additional support personnel to Iraq.
The new White House strategy “will not work,” Salazar said, noting that previous “surges” in 2006 failed to provide security to the strife-ridden streets of Baghdad.
“We’ve been there. And we’ve done that. And it hasn’t worked,” the senator said.
But Salazar also rejected calls for an immediate U.S. pullback from Iraq.
He criticized war critics who suggest, as he put it: “Just bring our troops home today. End of story. It’s over.”
“I don’t believe we can move forward with that kind of precipitous withdrawal,” said Salazar.
Waving a copy of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s recent report on Iraq, Salazar said: “What the American people are asking us to do is chart a new direction.”
“If we are going to find our way out of this quagmire,” said Salazar, “it is going to take a true bipartisan effort.”
Republican senators, however, said that the president’s critics are sending the wrong message to Iraqis, and to Islamic terrorists, by opposing the administration’s proposed escalation without offering a better alternative.
“Voting for this resolution is not leadership, it is criticism – criticism without the courage of offering solutions,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina.
“It is not supporting our troops to send them into harm’s way if you believe that all is lost,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a supporter of the president. He challenged the president’s critics to try and cut off funding for the war, if they really believed it is a hopeless quagmire, rather than pass non-binding resolutions.
