Feingold: Iraq funding cut-off by March 31, 2008

russ feingold...

“With brave Americans fighting and dying for a failed policy in Iraq, members of Congress shouldn’t delay action to end this misguided war for weeks or even months just for the sake of political comfort. That is why, when the Senate takes up the Iraq supplemental, I plan to offer the Feingold-Reid bill as an amendment to force the President to safely redeploy our troops by March 31, 2008 at which point funding for the war would be cut off.”

In addition to Reid's commitment to support the bill, the co-sponsors already on board as listed at Feingold's website include Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chris Dodd (D-CT), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), John Kerry (D-MA), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

The legislation includes a few caveats sure to be ignored by the wingnuts when they begin to attack it, so we'll point them out here. Namely, that Feingold's bill will not cut off funding for the purpose of:

* "conduct[ing] targeted operations...against members of al Qaeda and other international terrorist organizations";
* "security for United States infrastructure and personnel"; or
* "to train and equip Iraqi security services"

(click here for announcement and here for full text...)

i'll be looking for big tent democrat's response over at talkleft...

(thanks to the brad blog via raw story...)

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"Leaving is losing. That's the Bush doctrine."

atrios is blowing a fuse over a david ignatius column...

Leaving is losing. That's the Bush doctrine. You either embrace what the Democrats are offering, or you embrace Bush's "leaving is losing" plan. The Magical Pundit Pony Plan, which will never happen, is only about gazing at yourself in the mirror so you can marvel at how much smarter you are than all the politicians, instead of bothering to make the choice between the actual options.

4 years later I am so sick of every "what we really need to do in Iraq" column which gets published. None Of That Is Going To Happen. We either stay there under George Bush, or we start to get the fuck out. You don't get to micromanage the war.

atrios is right, of course... the criminals in the bush administration don't give a shit for benchmarks or even victory, for that matter... they don't give a shit if the iraqis murder each other down to the last man, as long as the taj mahal new embassy in the green zone and the permanent u.s. bases can remain intact... and, unfortunately, we've only got one congressman who's willing to put himself on the line about getting the hell out, and that's russ feingold... yes, harry reid has signed up with him, and so have leahy, boxer, kerry, and dodd, and that's good... but it's been feingold, and feingold alone, who has never wavered, not from day one... he's got a diary up at kos which is worth snipping a few words from...

If the President vetoes the emergency supplemental bill, it will only show more Americans and more members of Congress how detached his administration is from the reality of the situation in Iraq – and from the reality here at home, too. We will not be deterred by a veto or by the self-deluding rhetoric coming from die-hard supporters of the President’s misguided Iraq policy. We already have strong support for this latest effort from Senators Leahy, Boxer, Kerry, and Dodd. We will only work harder to act on the ever-growing consensus that ending our military involvement in Iraq is the right thing to do for our troops, our national security, and our ongoing fight against the global terrorist networks that threaten the safety of all Americans.

my man, russ... why the hell aren't you running in 2008...?

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