As the Pueblo Chieftain reports:
President Bush insisted Wednesday the U.S. would “lose its moral purpose in the world” if it withdraws from the war in Iraq – an argument that Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., rebuked, saying the Bush administration has directed a mismanaged war for four years that has undermined American leadership in the world.
Defending his vote to establish a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq next year, Salazar said he expects Bush to veto the defense supplemental bill being finished in the Senate this week.
“We’re trying to make this president listen to the American public,” Salazar said in a telephone press conference. “His answer has been `it’s my way or the highway.’ “
Saying the Democratic timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq next year would be “disastrous,” Bush told the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, “If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world and we will endanger our citizens.”
Salazar bristled at that, saying the Bush administration has mismanaged the war from the outset…
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Yo Ken what do say about your pal Al?
…he’ll introduce a bill to resume Habeus Corpus.
Go, Ken, Go. Then I can vote for you again.
……and to see Salazar vote for the timetable (which was a very close vote in the Senate).
See, see, Ken is on our side–he is just careful and judicious, and doesn’t froth at the mouth like Kerry does. Who do you think people respect more at the Capitol?
Yes, Ken is my man! He is a true leader who understands commitment. /sarc
You know what’s worse than running away? Being too stupid and arrogant not to. We should have “run away” from Vietnam 10 years before we did (or, better yet, never have gone in). The spilled blood on all sides served no purpose at all. And Vietnam? Trying hard to become a successful capitalist country, after all. Good thing we were so concerned with our “honor” back then: It would be a shame to have saved those tens of thousands of wasted lives. And good thing we’re so concerned with it now: Why should we back down now, when we can yet kill thousands of more Americans and Iraqis for no purpose? Do you really think that America can control the entire Middle East by force? And do you not understand that for every “terrorist” we kill there, we breed a hundred more who resent our violent presence in their homeland? This was stupid from beginning to end, and it’s stupid now. Unfortunately, the damage we’ve done, to ourselves and to others, can never be repaired.
See, we do agree on something.
know of morality or the purpose of this country in the world?
Congress is passing a bill that has all the funding Bush has asked for but, because it also includes a timetable as the American majority prefers, he’s going to veto it and the resulting delay will be the fault of… Congress!?!
This makes as much sense as anything that comes out of this President’s mouth. Bottom line: He is fighting desperately to run out the clock. Does he really think if he can put off the inevitable sorry end until the next administration, history won’t NOTICE who was completely responsible for this fiasco?
Salazar might not be everything the Dem base wants but the Dem base is finally learning a few lessons about listening to the all-or-nothing crowd: Something is a whole lot better than nothing. Being the majority beats being the minority. Basking in self-righteous purity from the sidelines gets old.
Ken was a committed cheerleader of this war while he was AG. When he ran Lieberman’s Presidential campaign in Colorado, he would have chimed in strongly with The Chimperor, and criticized anyone saying the things he’s saying today.
I’d like to think Salazar’s finally getting it. Instead I’m sure he’s just reading the the poll numbers on the wall and realizing he’d better get in line before he’s completely ignored by the rest of his Party, like Ben Nelson and Landrieu.
Then Salazar used the remainder of his time to beat his chest about how he’d stuck in $4.5 billion of pork for the USDA’s livestock assistance program, some of which may help the cattlemen he was addressing.
Pander, pork, flip flop. Ken Salazar in a nutshell.
There are a couple reasons why supporting the war when it started and not supporting it now should not be considered flip flopping. First of all consider the fact that Salazar probably supported the war based on the evidence Bush presented at the time, however true or false it may have been. Salazar may believe that many good things could have come from a successful occupation of Iraq. His not supporting the Iraq war is not a flip flop on his position of his support for the war in my opinion, but instead a vote of no confidence in the inept execution of the continued War in Iraq. Plenty of people still support the war despite diminishing support in polls, and i think it is fair to say that most people are not opposed to what we do in Iraq, they have only come to the realization that the Bush administration has continued to excute this war poorly.