Out of Iraq Caucus to Unveil Iraq Proposal
Via Greg Sargent, after not reaching agreement with Dem leadership, the Out Of Iraq Caucus will unveil its Iraq proposal tomorrow:
[The Out of Iraq Caucus is] going to present their plan to the public. Tomorrow morning, a group of them -- including Reps. Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Jerrold Nadler and others -- will hold a press conference to detail the specifics of their plan. It'll be interesting to see how the House Dem leadership reacts.As we also reported yesterday, the liberal Dems are privately circulating a "dear colleague" letter designed to win over other House members to their approach[:]
Dear Colleague,We write to share our thoughts with you about Congressional action regarding the ongoing occupation of Iraq and to make the case for fully funding the safe withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq over a clear timeline.
By framing their discussion of the war in terms of winning and losing, the Bush administration seeks to portray critics of their policies as opposed to victory, or supportive of defeat.
. . . There is no question that moving to stop this folly carries a political risk - the accusation that Democrats gave up on the Vietnam War, despite all evidence that it was an unwinnable conflict, hurt the party's credibility on national security issues for a generation.
But we must consider the very real cost of not acting. We are spending $8 billion a month occupying Iraq, with an average of 67 U.S. troops being killed and 500 being wounded. The cost to our security of having our military bogged down in Iraq indefinitely is unsustainable, and is not only sapping vital funds from efforts to fight global terrorism, but is strengthening jihadist recruitment efforts internationally. The longer we allow the administration to delay meaningful movement, and the longer we fail to extract ourselves from this quagmire, the more dangerous this failed foreign policy becomes to America and the rest of the world.
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