Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters has a partial transcript of yesterday’s “Today” show where David Gregory interviewed Senator Chuck Schumer. It’s very revealing, as you’ll soon see (emphasis added):
Gregory: “The Vice-President is dismissive of this [resolution] effort yesterday saying it’s not going to stop the president, and in fact he goes further, saying this will be detrimental to the troops on the ground.”
Schumer: “Absolutely not, and I think it’s going to be shown, when this resolution comes up, and it is non-binding, my guess is that not only are we going to get a vast majority of Democrats to vote for it in one form or another, but close to a majority of the Republicans. And that is going to shock even Vice-President Cheney.”
Gregory: “But how can the public really buy the Democrats support the troops but don’t support the mission? How can you do both?”
Schumer: “Well, that’s the difficulty. A resolution that says we’re against this escalation, that’s easy. The next step will be how do you put further pressure on the administration against the escalation but still supporting the troops who are there? And that’s what we’re figuring out right now.”
Click here to see the video.
Finkelstein also has a recap of this morning’s “Today” show co-host Meredith Vieira interviewing Senator Chuck Hagel, who was very cagey on the answer to the question of whether or not he believed our troops were “fighting and dying for nothing.”
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Lorica, I moved this to today’s open thread.
–ST
Comment by Lorica @ 1/26/2007 - 11:11 am
The non-binding resolution is simple: it’s a way for the Democrats (and not a few Republicans) to have a Recorded Vote that expresses some disagreement with the President concerning the conduct of the war, but without actually doing anything about it.
The Democrats won the last elections, no doubt about it, and they won it based on the electorate’s displeasure with the conduct of the war. That being the case, why don’t the Democrats have the cojones to end the war? All that they have to do is to refuse to fund it any more. While President Bush could veto any fund cut-off for the current fiscal year, the Democrats could simply refuse to pass an appropriation for any funds for any troops in Iraq for FY2008 — which would mean that President Bush would have to withdraw every last one of them by September 30, 2007.
The dirty little secret is that the Democrats want the war to continue, at least until election day, 2008.
Comment by Dana @ 1/26/2007 - 8:31 pm