John Warner (R of Va), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, plans to make Donald Rumsfeld answer questions about Iraq in the Senate. According to a
story in today's NY Times, there is a sense of urgency to discuss Iraq quickly when Congress returns to work next week.
According to Warner:
"The level of concern is, I think, gradually rising," Mr. Warner said in an interview on Friday. "Our nation has given so much to the Iraqi people, and what are they giving us in return?"
Now, Warner won't likely push for withdrawal; instead, this will be about the lack of direction and concern about current planning. But still, there's little doubt that a general malaise has settled in with Americans, beyond those who have been skeptical from the outset:
He spoke as leaders of both parties acknowledged that lawmakers had heard, during the August recess, from voters unhappy with events in Iraq. The public sentiment has been reflected in polls indicating a drop in support for President Bush and his Iraq policies. The political atmosphere has also been influenced by the antiwar vigil outside Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas.
The reference to Camp Casey seems to reflect that no matter how much the Right tries to smear Sheehan, her appeal is having an impact. So it's good to see that grassroots democracy still can work in America.
Of course, there are still many Kool Aid drinkers out there:
Appearing on ABC television on Sunday, Senator John Thune, a freshman Republican from South Dakota, acknowledged "a certain amount of fatigue" among the public with events in Iraq. "And particularly, when we hear the news of casualties, people in this country don't want to hear that," Mr. Thune said on the program "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." But he added, "At the same time, I think we have to keep the broader purpose in mind, and that is that we are making this world safer."
Safer? ... Somebody needs to explain to me how creating another Iran makes us safer... how creating another Afghanistan - according to our CIA, Iraq will surpass it as a terrorist exporter - makes us safer...
More:
We are talking about a constitution here that's going to be, by Middle Eastern standards, extraordinarily enlightened, that is going to be approved in all likelihood in October, and you'll have a democratic government elected in December," Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said on "Fox News Sunday."
He noted that it had still been less than three years since Saddam Hussein was toppled. "It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution," Senator McConnell said.
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm getting sick and tired of comparisons to our nation's founding, as if on day one James Madison and Alexander Hamilton decided we'd be a theocracy... Also, there wasn't a raging insurgency at the time our framers met in Philadelphia...
We must continually associate aquiescence with the status quo with troop neglect. And we should make the case that with Republicans seriously questioning current policies, such blind loyalty to the WH is not only reckless, it's out of the mainstream...
And Warner isn't stopping at Rumsfeld:
Mr. Warner has also said he will schedule a hearing in the next several weeks on whether the Pentagon has failed to hold senior officials and military officers responsible for the prisoner abuses that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, and at other detention centers in Iraq, Cuba and Afghanistan.