Use the power of the purse By RUSS FEINGOLD Jan. 10, 2007
Keeping our brave troops in Iraq indefinitely is having a devastating impact on our national security and military readiness.
That's why I have consistently advocated that we set a timetable to redeploy our troops from Iraq. But the president refuses to set a timetable, even though the American people soundly rejected his Iraq policy in November. Instead, the president has announced he wants to send approximately 20,000 more troops. We should be redeploying our troops out of Iraq, not sending in more....
Conditions in Iraq are deteriorating, the strain on our military is increasing and the threats we face to our national security elsewhere in the world continue to grow. We can't afford to wait any longer. Congress must use its main power - the power of the purse - to put an end to our involvement in the war in Iraq.
Over the next several weeks, I am going to take a hard look at just how we should do that in my capacity as a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, both of which will be holding hearings on Iraq.
As the president made clear Wednesday night, he has no intention of redeploying our troops from Iraq. Congress cannot continue to accept this. Congress can, by restricting funding for this misguided war, do what the president refuses to do - redeploy from Iraq to refocus on defeating global terrorist networks.
Some will claim that cutting off funding for the war would endanger our brave troops on the ground. Not true. The safety of our service men and women in Iraq is paramount, and we can and should end funding for the war without putting our troops in further danger.
Congress will continue to give our troops the resources and support they need, but by, for example, specifying a time after which funding for the war would end, it can give the president the time needed to redeploy troops safely from Iraq.
Our troops in Iraq have done their job professionally and heroically. But we cannot continue to send our nation's best into a war that was started - and is still maintained - on false pretenses. An indefinite presence of U.S. military personnel in Iraq will not fix that country's political problems. And sending more troops will not provide the stability that can only come from a political agreement.
Our country needs a new national security strategy that starts with a redeployment from Iraq so we can focus on the global threats to our national security that have only grown while this administration has been bogged down in that country.
We need to finish the job in Afghanistan and address threats to our security in Somalia and other weak or failed states that we have neglected for too long. We should scrap the failed diplomacy the administration has used to offend, push away and ultimately alienate so many of our friends and allies, while we also repair and infuse new capabilities and strength into our armed forces.
Keeping massive numbers of American troops in Iraq indefinitely is not the way to defeat global terrorist networks. We will continue to weaken, not strengthen, our national security by continuing to pour a disproportionate level of our military and intelligence and fiscal resources into Iraq.
In the November elections, the American people made it clear that they want our troops out of Iraq, and it is up to Congress to respond. Our top national security priority must be to defeat the global terrorist networks operating in countries around the world. With Wednesday's announcement that he seeks to escalate the Iraq war, the president made it clear that he will continue to shortchange that global fight and to ignore the will of the American people.
From the beginning, this war has been a mistake, and the policies that have carried it out have been a failure. Congress must not allow the president to continue or escalate a war that has already come at such a terrible cost.
It's time for Congress to use the power of the purse to end this devastating war and finally bring American troops out of Iraq.
Russ Feingold is a Democratic U.S. senator from Wisconsin.
Sen. Feingold also blogged similarly on dkos - "
OLBERMANN: It is harrowing enough that the Bush administration got us into Iraq without an exit strategy. But four years later, is there really no military plan to get out? Not even one the president has in the bottom drawer of his desk, just in case?
Our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN, that the charge tonight from Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who is seeking a way for Congress to not only stop the current proposed troop escalation, but to stop this war altogether.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FEINGOLD: Congress must use its main power, the power of the purse, to put an end to our involvement in this disastrous war. And I‘m not talking here only about the surge or escalation. It is time to use the power of the purse to bring our troops out of Iraq.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
OLBERMANN: Senator Feingold joins us tonight from Washington.
Senator, thanks for your time again.
FEINGOLD: Good to be on the show, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Your fellow Democrats, and obviously a growing number of Republicans, are against any kind of troop increase. But do you think there is a similar kind of bipartisan agreement growing on actually withdrawing from Iraq now?
FEINGOLD: Well, you know, the politicians are usually behind the people. And this is a terrible example of that, of where, yes, there‘s a lot of people realizing we shouldn‘t increase the troops, and that that‘s an awful idea. But there‘s a lack of planning for what‘s really going to happen, which is, we need to redeploy these troops, and we need to redeploy them soon.
I was just in the Intelligence Committee at an open hearing, and I tried to ask some generals and intelligence people, you know, What are some of the things we should be thinking about as we bring these troops out? And they said, Well, Senator, that‘s just a hypothetical.
And my response was, Well, you didn‘t have a plan to take us into this Iraq war. You darn well better have a plan for bringing us out. And they‘re not planning, and it really does concern me.
OLBERMANN: How would stopping the money spigot work? How do you do it?
FEINGOLD: Well, that‘s what I was trying to ask their advice on. You know, it‘s been done before. When President Nixon wanted to go into Cambodia, the funding was not allowed. When it was clear that the situation in Somalia in the early ‘90s wasn‘t working, we passed, and I was in the Senate, a resolution that said, By X date, the funding will be cut off. We‘re going to leave you plenty of time to make sure the troops can come out safely.
But this kind of thing has been done before. Obviously, when you go into a war, you got to come out of a war, and there are safe ways to do it, and not safe ways to do it. We ought to be planning with legislation and working with the military and everybody else, a safe exit from Iraq, because it‘s long overdue.
OLBERMANN: According to President Bush, those, like yourself, who have issues with his plan, as he stated it last night, let me quote it, “have a responsibility to explain how the path they propose would be more likely to succeed.” How do you answer that?
FEINGOLD: Well, very simply. The president has been wrong on every aspect of this war. He was wrong about the premise that we went into the war on, he was wrong about the idea that there wasn‘t a civil war, he was wrong about the idea that this didn‘t help rather than hurt al Qaeda.
So I don‘t see it as my responsibility to make up for the fact that he took us into this war under false pretenses, and is keeping us there under false pretenses. The fact is, the situation now is completely unacceptable. It‘s devastating to our American national security and our military.
The burden is on them to justify continuing this awful mistake. The burden is not on us, who never thought we should go there in the first place.
OLBERMANN: And continuing a mistake, that raises the question that the president brought up last night, in the threats to Iran and Syria, as he vowed to, let me quote it again, “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” You told Secretary of State Rice today that you feel our involvement in Iraq has been catastrophic with regards to our national security, as you just said it here. What do you think about the president‘s suggestion now to expand this in some way to face Iran and Syria?
FEINGOLD: Well, the problem with all these folks, especially the president, is, they simply can‘t see this as an international challenge. They see this whole thing through the eyes of Iraq. I call it the Iraq-centric policy. They have to define it through Iraq, because they made the awful mistake of going there instead of beefing up our operation in Afghanistan.
So if he‘s talking about doing something like that with Iran, he‘s forgetting about the fact that in Afghanistan right now, a battalion is apparently going to be removed from eastern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is planning a major offensive, and the Marine commandant himself said this is a bad idea. Where is it going? It‘s going to Iraq.
So they‘ve got the priorities all wrong. We need to look at those that attacked us on 9/11, and as I remember, they were hanging out in Afghanistan. And if we don‘t get serious, they‘re going to be able to hang out in Afghanistan again pretty soon.
OLBERMANN: Is it be fair to say that the best present that President Ahmadinejad of Iran could get would be a threat from the United States? Would that not bolster his somewhat shaky hold on that country?
FEINGOLD: I‘m not sure. I mean, the fact is, yes, all options have to be on the table with regard to Iran. You can‘t take that lightly. But we need to come up with a policy that says that all of our allies and all the other countries in the world do everything they can to try to persuade Iran not to go to nuclear weapons.
The answer is not to try to take it up to the level where either he or others in the Islamic world can take advantage of this to encourage further negative action toward the United States.
OLBERMANN: Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. As always, sir, great thanks for your time, great thanks for joining us.
FEINGOLD: Thanks, Keith. Thanks so much.
While you're at it, be sure to check out Olbermann's Special Comment transcript and video -
