Got their asses handed to them, again and again.
from AP:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled Senate easily defeated a Democratic effort Tuesday to pressure President Bush to outline a timetable for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It then overwhelmingly endorsed a weaker statement calling on the administration to explain its Iraq policy...
...On the question of a timetable for troop withdrawal, senators rejected the Democrats' proposal by 58-40. Democratic leaders had advanced the measure in the wake of declining public support for a conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 U.S. lives and cost more than $200 billion...
...Republicans countered with their own nonbinding alternative that the Senate approved on a 79-19 vote. Five Democrats sided with the majority party...
...The Senate added the Iraq policy to a defense bill the Senate approved on a 98-0 vote Tuesday...
...The measure includes White House-opposed language that would prohibit the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees and standardize interrogation procedures used by U.S. troops...
...Senators added the language Tuesday that would allow Guantanamo detainees to appeal their status as "enemy combatants" and the rulings of U.S. military tribunals to a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. That avenue would take the place of the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees in 2004 to fight the legality of their detentions -- the right to file habeas corpus petitions in any federal court....
Earlier Tuesday, senators defeated a Democratic proposal that would have reinstated the right to file habeas corpus lawsuits, but limited the challenges to one court.
...the bill also includes provisions requiring the Bush administration to provide Congress with details on purportedly secret CIA prisons overseas and stripping of security clearances of any federal government official who knowingly discloses national security secrets...
...The House version of the defense bill doesn't include those provisions, nor does it include the language on the detention, interrogation or prosecution of detainees....
The Senate-approved Iraq policy calls for -- but does not require -- the Bush administration to "explain to Congress and the American people its strategy..
Very impressive. Dems cannot maintain discipline, get completely pre-empted with watered-down versions, that will get further watered-down in the house, and allow a great end run around habeas. Who are the five Democrats without discipline?