Tuesday, Feingold reintroduced the bill for a withdrawal of Iraq before July 07 (apparently identical to what Senator Kerry and Feingold introduced last summer), and an editorial on the issue.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/16/a_way_out_of_iraq.php

A Way Out Of Iraq
Sen. Russ Feingold
November 16, 2006

On Election Day, the American people weighed in at the ballot box: They want to get our troops out of Iraq. Voters rejected the president’s failed Iraq policy, putting Democrats in charge of Congress and responsible for setting a new direction for Iraq, and, most importantly, for our national security.

Democrats agree that we should begin redeploying troops, but some do not want to set a target deadline for the majority of troops to be withdrawn. That is a mistake. Without a target date, redeployment could drag on indefinitely. The president consistently refused to set a target date for withdrawal, and Democrats shouldn’t follow in his footsteps. Democrats should move forward with a new Iraq policy that includes a target date for the redeployment of U.S. troops so that we can refocus on defeating global terrorist networks.
...

A target date isn’t just critical to our Iraq policy, it is essential for our national security policy. We cannot adequately focus on the pressing national security challenges we face around the globe when so many of our brave troops are in Iraq, and so many billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent there. A timetable ensures that we can refocus our resources on fighting terrorist networks and on addressing trouble spots around the world that threaten our national security.
...

 

It is good to see a few good people will continue to fight for a real deadline.

Kerry is the only one who mentions our responsibity to rebuild Iraq; if not personally then financially.
I am sure Dems will investigate Haliburton and Bechtel for starters and demand an accounting of the money given to them.
We still owe Iraq their country back and functioning like it was before we wrecked the place.

If we leave and don’t fix the place, it will be in worse shape then Dumbya’s dorm room after a frat party.

Carol Shea-Porter, the subject of the previous thread header here on blog.johnkerry.com, continues to garner favorable press and political respect. As the Boston Globe reported yesterday:

WASHINGTON—The last time Carol Shea-Porter had been in the same room as President Bush, she said, her T-shirt’s message—“Turn your back on Bush”—won her a push out the door from a Bush supporter as she left an airplane hangar in Portsmouth.

When Shea-Porter saw Bush again Monday night at the White House, she shook his hand as the next House member from New Hampshire’s First District. The conversation was cordial, Shea-Porter said, but that doesn’t mean she’s forgotten the message of change that sent her to the nation’s capital.

“Our obligation is to take what we heard and to speak it loudly in Washington,” Shea-Porter, a Democrat, said yesterday in an interview in the courtyard of the Rayburn House Office Building, where she is undergoing orientation for newly elected members of Congress.

Shea-Porter is one of the very few people in the age of big-money campaigns who can watch “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and truly see herself. She’s of a political breed that many believed was extinct: the angry citizen who decides to run for Congress—and wins.

[snip]

Her victory will make her New Hampshire’s first female US representative—and the most liberal member of Congress the state has had in recent years. Now, Shea-Porter will have to turn her formidable campaign skills into running a congressional office. She’ll have to work with a Democratic establishment that includes many who didn’t know her name just a week ago.

Indeed, there are strict limits on what any individual member can do to move the grinding machinery of the House. As a freshman, Shea-Porter will get low priority in choosing her committee assignments, a factor likely to determine which issues she can help mold.

“I’m curious to see how she’ll do, because party politics is a lot of the job in Washington,” said Jim Craig , the state House Democratic leader whom Shea-Porter defeated in the primary. “She’s not beholden to anyone, and that’s good in a sense, but it might cause problems for her.”

[snip]

Now, as Shea-Porter prepares to begin the weekly commute to Washington, she realizes that she has to learn to channel her grass-roots energy into a very ossified political process. She has plenty of doubters, starting with Bradley, who in his concession speech seemed to be already girding for a rematch: “Sometimes the pendulum swings one way and then it swings back. We’ll look forward to when it swings back.”

Shea-Porter wants US troops out of Iraq within six months, a balanced budget, and universal healthcare provided through Medicare. She acknowledged that those goals will be difficult to achieve, but said she’s committed to working with members of both parties to at least make progress.

“It’s not a disgrace to miss the goal as long as you’re working on it. What’s disgraceful is not to even start,” she said. “People voted for change, they voted for an agenda—and you can hear it—but they also voted for civility.”

Democrats are beginning to learn Shea-Porter’s name. The morning after the election, the DCCC called with its first offer of financial support.

“They asked us if we wanted them to pay our debt, and we told them we didn’t have any,” Shea-Porter said. “But it was nice of them to offer.”

plenty of class plus roots of grass,

the question now is shall we withdraw and face the humiliation of bringing a civil war into another country.  or shall we try to make these people live in peace, although that would probably takes many many years if not decade.

i think the army should withdraw now, get international support and offer financial support to help the poor and let put the internationl pressure for them to work it out.

Jean:

I so agree with everything you said - especially ” The democrats need John Kerry’s courage to speak truth to power and his commitment to moving us forward so we remain a great Country . ”  It is disgraceful how many Democrats have treated him since the election. (Governor Dean being a notable exception.) Like you, I hope that Senator Kerry continues to be a voice of sanity on Iraq and national security.

From the exit polls, it seems the two main issues that people were concerned about were Iraq and corruption. There is no one in either party who can better speak to both of these issues. On Iraq, people who consider themselves Democrats are closer to Senator Kerry’s position than to the Democratic leaders supposedly shunning him.

As to corruption, no one has as solid a record as Senator Kerry. He stood totally alone in the Senate when he pursued his investigation of BCCI, a corrupt bank that was facilitating drug running and helping terrorists. In addition to being Osama Bin Laden’s bank, they funded the development of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. Yet, other Senators wanted to protect Democratic moneymen who were connected to BCCI. He also was called a conspiracy nut for pursuing a serious investigation into the Reagan administration’s illegal funding of the Contras.

Senator Kerry also wrote legislation called the Clean Election Act that was real campaign finance reform. Kerry has never taken PAC money and has been a very clean politician over a very long career.

Senator McCain is likely to try to run as a maverick reformer. In reality McCain is neither - and Senator Kerry is both. It may be the lack of support from party leaders will enable Senator Kerry to be seen as the old fashioned,  uncorruptible voice of integrity he is.  This is in distinct contrast to many of the people who are kicking him when he is down.

Beachmom,
Your are correct.  I can’t beleive it either.
He visits a country right after we sunk his trade agreement and essentialy tells them we could have beaten you if we just killed more of you.
By the way…all those mines we left…treat ‘em as easter eggs.
The deformed and diseased from Agent Orange?  Too bad… just a few gene changes after all.

Here is the embarrassing episode on video:

In Vietnam, Bush Repeats Kissinger Line: ‘We’ll Succeed Unless We Quit’

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/17/bush-kissinger-vietnam/

Depravity:

(November 17, 2006—07:50 PM EDT)

FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL Ed Meese is interviewed in the latest issue of GQ—and not for his sartorial splendor. This is as depressing a statement on American liberty and justice as anything I have read these last six years.

Here are some highlights from the Q&A:

<blockquote> Let’s move to the Geneva Conventions. A lot of people are concerned that terrorism suspects don’t have any kind of habeas corpus. In order to be covered by the Geneva Convention, you have to fulfill certain requirements. . . . So there are a number of criteria in the Geneva Convention that are not met by everyone on the battlefield. Then there’s another category of people going back to the Revolutionary War—people who were in those days called spies. If they were not in uniform, they were subject to being summarily executed.

  You mean they were executed without even a military tribunal?
  I think there were some. Also, a “tribunal” could be a military commander ordering the hanging. I think that’s what happened to some of them.

  You’re advocating summary execution.
  Well, yeah, that happens in the military. Illegal combatants are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

-snip-

Meese is not a has-been from the Reagan years. He has been a key advisor to the current White House on the nominations and confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. This is a man who is widely considered to be at the pinnacle of the powerful conservative legal movement. This is what we have come to.

Update: Meese is also a member of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group, readers have reminded me.</blockquote>