Meanwhile, the United States Senate seems so distracted by a much-discussed, much condemned ad in a newspaper two weeks ago. They saw a chance to score cheap partisan political points based on a newspaper ad instead of confronting the ugly mess of an Iraqi civil war that’s on the front page every day. It is as insulting as it is illuminating that in a week long debate in which each side can offer just five amendments, the Republicans would waste one of their chances to change a broken policy by choosing instead to embrace a political stunt.

The open-ended, seemingly endless commitment of massive numbers of American troops in Iraq has done nothing to create political progress. George Bush told us that “reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible” — it has not it. He promised to hold the Iraqis accountable for meeting the benchmarks that they themselves agreed to — he did not.

The result? While Americans fight and die to give Iraqis “breathing room,” Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve the political issues that matter the most. No progress on the linchpin issue of sharing oil revenues. No de-Ba’athification law, no provincial elections, and no amnesty.

By any measure, that’s a failing grade for a purported new strategy that is really more of the same that has failed in forging the political reconciliation that is the last, best hope for ending a bloody civil war over age-old sectarian differences.

The lessons are clear: No deadline means no accountability for Iraqi politicians. And no accountability means no progress. This is a losing equation — and we need to change it before we sacrifice any more American lives to a failed policy.

You’ve heard the arguments and counter-arguments flying around Washington this month — a month when, like so many months before, the American people were promised accountability but given only more rhetoric.

The rhetoric of “no surrender” does nothing to illuminate a grave and serious dilemma of 160,000 US troops in the middle of an Iraqi civil war our troops can’t be equipped to end. The rhetoric, while we witness a catastrophe, is that staying in Iraq is the only way to prevent a catastrophe. That’s a failure to look reality in the face. The way to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam is not by repeating them, by staying in Iraq and pursuing a policy we know can’t work.

This is a historic crisis in our foreign policy — a crisis of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld’s making. The fact is that no path forward is without tremendous cost and risk to this great nation. But what I do know is that the American people have spoken: this war was a mistake and is not working. It would be tragic if we continue to compound old mistakes with new ones.

That is why I believe strongly — for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned — that we need a new strategy. And I hope you’ll join me in sending this President a message, loud and clear, with too many votes to ignore, filibuster, or veto: the current strategy isn’t working, and we need a new direction in Iraq.

The speech that Senator Kerry delivered to the Senate on Thursday is forceful, fact-filled, and well worth reading in full detail. There’s a complete text transcript of it here on the site, and the independent video bloggers over at KerryVision.net have posted a series of video clips of the Senator addressing his colleagues with what they describe as a “point-by-point dismantling of counter-arguments, such as ‘we cannot leave Iraq in the hands of Al Qaeda’ or ‘The surge is a success, it was only the previous approach that was the failure’ ” revealing his “depth of knowledge about the history of Iraq and the world, that is amazing in its detail.”

Here are some key excerpts from that powerful and compelling Senate speech calling for a genuine, realistic change of course in Iraq:

I have been listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and sometimes I think we are talking past each other and about different legislation.

The proposal in the Levin-Reed-Kerry and other Senators legislation says nothing about precipitous. I don’t know how one interprets “precipitous” when we leave the President the discretion to decide how many troops he is going to have there for training, for prosecuting the war on terror against al-Qaeda, and for the job of protecting American facilities and forces.

The fact is that for many people in the country, this is inadequate. It is not precipitous. To have a debate about buzz words that excite the base does not serve our troops well, and it certainly does not serve our national security interests very well.

We keep hearing these words “surrender” and “choose to lose,” and so forth. It is insulting to a lot of people who have spent a lifetime, some who served in the Armed Forces, being told this by people who have not, that they are somehow choosing to put a strategy in place purposefully that is to surrender on behalf of America or to lose on behalf of America. Come on. It happens that a lot of people in the Senate and the country believe there is a better way to defend American interests.

[ ... ]

There is a total mythology here about al-Qaeda, not mythology in the sense that they are dangerous and they are real. We all understand that. Al-Qaeda is a threat. Al-Qaeda is a serious challenge to all of us in both parties, to the country, to every citizen. But al-Qaeda is not the principal problem in Iraq.

It was again interesting that General Petraeus, in answer to a question in the Armed Services Committee, was asked about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Iraq, whether they were there at the beginning, and he said no. There is no connection between al-Qaeda in Iraq and 9/11, none whatsoever, despite countless, countless references by the President, the Vice President, and a bunch of folks on the other side to try to link them together and confuse Americans, grab their emotions, get them in the gut, and somehow that is going to excuse a policy that cannot find another excuse.

[ ... ]

You have to change the dynamics. You have to change the play on the ground. You have to get them worried and get them thinking about legitimate implications of what happens if we do something. Right now, when the United States starts talking militarily about Iran, they are not particularly scared because they know the situation with our troops. They read the newspapers. They hear the debate in the Senate. They know how overstretched we are.

I mean, this is not complicated. We don’t have the leverage that we ought to have to get them to do what they ought to be doing — if they are willing to do it at all — and put it to the test to find out if they are willing to do it at all because we are going to have 130,000 troops there no matter what they do next summer. We have already told them that. The same number of troops we had last year when America said: Staying the course was not good enough; we want a better strategy. Our strategy is to go back to where we were when the country almost disintegrated a year ago, with 130,000 troops.

[ ... ]

I think what we are seeing are the moves of the President, who has decided to wait out his time in office and shift responsibility for this disaster to the next President. He has as much as said that, that we are going to have troops there for a long time, and the next President is going to have to resolve these differences.

I believe we have a bigger responsibility than that in the Senate. I believe that very deeply. When I was a young serviceman and in a war, I remember looking to Washington and wanting those folks who were in positions of responsibility to make the judgments that affected my life on a day-to-day basis.

I remember being bitterly disappointed in the debates that went on as people kept finding these same kinds of excuses, the same arguments were made. I remember President Nixon actually stood up and said: I am not going to be the first President to lose a war.

Our military has not lost this. Our military has won everything they engaged in on a personal basis. Nobody doubts the power or strength of the American military. No one would doubt the power or strength of the American military if they announced that, because the Iraqis are not making their decisions, we are not going to stay here and keep dying for you, folks. I don’t think that is losing. I think that is actually a note of reality.

It is the Iraqis who are losing. It is the Iraqi politicians, led by Mr. Maliki, if they are led at all, who are unwilling to make the decisions. They are the ones losing this opportunity for democracy. They are the ones losing the opportunity for peace. They are the ones turning their backs on the opportunity for reconciliation — not us. It is not for us to reconcile. No brave troop in Iraq has the ability to create that reconciliation. You are not going to create that reconciliation at the end of a gun barrel. It doesn’t happen. It never has.

[ ... ]

Now, why a deadline? I guess it is kind of like anybody doing their homework — we operate under deadlines here. Does anybody here believe we get the budget done without a deadline that we usually have? We usually have drop-dead times. In fact, we even move the clocks. We have a continuing resolution that is short-lived, and then we come back and we live under a certain sense of, you know, a responsibility factor there and all kinds of deadlines.

The fact is, deadlines have worked in Iraq already. There was a deadline to have the transfer from the Provisional Authority from Paul Bremer. In fact, Iraqis and a lot of other people said: Do not do this to us; we are not ready. But the Government, our Government, to its credit, we insisted and said: No, this is what is going to happen. And it happened. Now, the decisions they made afterward were awful. But the transfer took place; likewise, the elections; likewise, the Constitution. Each of them was accomplished with a deadline.

In fact, the President himself has already set a deadline, in some ways, because he is saying: We are going to have X number of forces out by such and such a time — 30,000. That is a deadline. He has told us when — by next spring. General Petraeus has set a deadline that he is going to come back by next March and he is going to say something to us.

So this idea that deadlines don’t work or it is a losing equation, I just do not agree with that. I think, like any human reaction, when a big country like the United States of America gets serious in putting some deadlines there, people can begin to respond and you change the dynamics that people are dealing with.

[ ... ]

I have heard people say: Well, you know, we obviously need to honor the lives of those we have lost. Yes, we do. I believe that is what we are trying to do. I think you honor the lives of those who have been lost there and those who have given their lives by making certain that we are not wasteful going forward, that we are reasonable, that we are not stupid going forward, that we do what is correct.

But you do not lose lives to honor the lives you have lost. That does not honor them. And losing more lives and the fact that we have lost lives is not an excuse for continuing the same policy.

Now they argue it is not the same policy; we have a new general, we have a new strategy. But it is not a strategy; it is a tactic that has no relationship to the real strategy that has to be political and diplomatic and much more creative and much more global in this case.

[ ... ]

This is an opportunity for us to try to do what I know is very difficult, because I understand the pressures that are put on colleagues, many of whom have come to the floor and spoken eloquently in opposition to the war and in opposition to the strategy. But they somehow won’t translate those words into a vote. They won’t go that extra step of actually confronting the President and changing the policy.

What General Petraeus has obviously succeeded in doing — and we understand it — is giving people a reason to say: Give us 6 more months. He is obviously going to get that 6 more months, because the President has the power to veto and the power to move his policy in these next days. But I hope my colleagues will think about how history is going to measure what we do here and how their own responsibilities measure up to what this moment is about.

I think the facts speak loudly and clearly for the imperative to have a policy that moves in a better direction to protect our Nation. That is the bottom line. That is what is at stake, our national security and our ability to protect future generations and stand up and lead the world in a more effective way in order to eliminate al-Qaeda and, in fact, open up a whole set of new possibilities with Islam and a host of countries that are currently sitting on the sidelines and standing apart from us because they disagree with our policy and the way we are implementing it.

I hope our colleagues will take advantage of this opportunity, and I hope we will cease to have a debate on buzz words and slogans but instead a debate on facts and do justice to the troops who, as I said, deserve a policy that is equal to what they are doing on our behalf every single day.

[ ... ]

Over the last years, I have defended veterans who have been under assault from any quarters, left or right. I spoke out in 2000 when John McCain’s integrity and military record was questioned by the Bush campaign in South Carolina. I spoke out when Max Cleland’s patriotism was savaged by people who had never worn the uniform. I defended Jack Murtha when vicious partisans on the right called that decorated marine a “coward.”

I spoke out when the Bush administration questioned the patriotism of career military men and Generals throughout the war in Iraq, whether it was General Shinseki, or many in uniform who spoke out against Secretary Rumsfeld. I don’t reserve my defense of patriotism for Democrats, I defend all who have worn the uniform, whether they agree with me or not.

I wish I could say the same for those who brought forward the Cornyn amendment and voted against the Boxer amendment. This was not a proud day in the Senate, or a high mark in our politics; rather, it was hours lost and time wasted when the Senate should have delivered what all the men and women of the armed forces truly deserve: a policy equal to their sacrifice.

Yes, Senator Kerry was very busy this week. It was a week that began with a publicity stunt by a student in Florida, and ended with a publicity stunt by Republicans in Washington. But it was a week in which, when all is said and done, a great deal of good was said and done — by John Kerry, and by those who stand with him against the people in power who keep trying to make us give up our genuine rights in exchange for a false sense of security.