ATXD Newsroom

Reid: Bipartisan Consensus Emerging To Change Course In Iraq

Friday, May 11, 2007

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a new Iraq Supplemental bill.

Now it is our turn in the Senate to take the next step and pass our version of the bill to conference. 

We all know that reaching consensus on a new bill to send to the President will not be easy.

We all know that passions run high on this issue. 

But there is new reason this week to believe that a bipartisan consensus on Iraq is emerging.

Throughout these talks with the White House and our Republican colleagues in Congress, Democrats have stood with firm resolve that we need a bill that both fully funds our troops and responsibly changes course in the war.

That is what the American people want.  A new poll out this week shows that 75 percent of Americans favor benchmarks and 60 percent favor a timetable for reducing combat forces.

It is what President Bush's own military advisors say we need, including General Petraeus, who has said that this war must be won politically, not militarily.

Now, in just the last few days, we have seen our Republican colleagues tell the President that his war strategy is failing.

Over the weekend, House Minority Leader John Boehner said: "By the time we get to September or October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B."

This week my colleague Senator Lott said: "This fall we have to see some significant changes on the ground."

And just days ago, Leader McConnell echoed those sentiments as well.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday a broad coalition of Republican House Members expressed their dissent directly to President.

One of them - Republican Tom Davis of Virginia - called it their chance to confront a President who, as he put it, is in a bubble.

I wish that my Republican colleagues - who now agree that President Bush's open-ended commitment has failed - would put some teeth behind their views.

With courageous American troops in harm's way every day, the time for action is long past due.

Nonetheless, this is a welcome shift.  It is encouraging. 

It gives me hope that in the coming days, weeks and months, we will be able to work together with good faith and bipartisanship to give our troops and all Americans the new course that they demand and deserve.

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Conservatives in opposition to Mitt Romney have constantly levied the charge of “flip-flopper,” based upon his changing statements on abortion. In an interesting turn, Romney is now being called a flip-flopper… by Planned Parenthood! The Planned Parenthood website states: “In 2002, as a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, Romney submitted a candidate questionnaire to the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts stating his support for the Roe v. Wade decision, as well as increased access to emergency contraception and comprehensive sex education in the public schools. He has since reversed his position on all of these issues as he seeks the Republican nomination for President.” This is quite the ironic situation. In 2002, Romney said what he needed to say in order to get elected. In 2007 he is again saying what he needs to say in order to get elected, and it will end up costing him (potential) votes. Planned Parenthood even went so far as to protest Mitt Romney during a fundraiser he held on February 15th.

http://www.ppaction.org/ppvotes/romney.html

George W. Bush's father was meeting with Osama bin Laden's brother, Shafig bin Laden, in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Washington, on the morning of 9/11. They were on Carlyle Group business just a few miles from where hijackers supposedly acting on behalf of Osama bin Laden would fly a plane into the Pentagon.

Recall that the chief financier of the so-called hijackers, Pakistan's Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with Bush administration officials the week before 9/11. He also met with Bob Graham and Porter Goss on the morning of the attacks, who would later go on to head the first 9/11 investigative committee.

"On 11 September, while Al-Qaeda's planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Carlyle Group hosted a conference at a Washington hotel. Among the guests of honour was a valued investor: Shafig bin Laden, brother to Osama."

Two dozen members of Osama bin Laden's family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.