On the news on Imus, Senator Warner

[karynnj]

is quoted as saying we should give the Iraqi leaders a few months, if they aren't making any progress, we need to change the course. (That doesn't mean to Kerry's plan, but it sounds like he is re-thinking things. (Imus dissed him - pointing out he married Elizabeth Taylor whan she was fat) They also said Levin was saying the same thing.

[beachmom]

1. John Warner is most certainly moving in Kerry's direction

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2155617.php

Warner flatly declared that the U.S. is “losing the Baghdad campaign” as the number of casualties rises.

“War grinds on and we taking distressing tolls of life and limb every day,” he said.

Warner said something big needs to happen to jump start the government so it regains some hope after last year’s elections. He suggested another vote on a referendum for the Iraqi people about whether and how long they want U.S. troops to remain.




Warner is basically saying that if the Iraqi people set a date for American troops to withdraw he's all for it. In fact, he WANTS them to say that. That's all that is left for him in supporting Kerry's plan. He just wants to see if there is support for that within the Iraqi populace. Obviously, he knows the Iraqi government no longer has any credibility and thinks it should go straight to the people.

[karynnj]

2. Wow, That would be something

that's not a huge difference and the Iraqi people have consistantly said for some time we should leave. It would be incredible if Warner joins Kerry. That could really be the tipping point. This may suggest that the debate on K/F was not just out of kindness and respect for Kerry as a person, but a respect for the plan.

[beachmom]

3. Well, I think it was both

And, I'm sorry to say that Warner, as shown with the torture "compromise", tends to let us down when it comes to crossing that line in the sand and standing up against the president. But really, after the '06 elections, it may be "safe" to do so, since Bush will be a complete lame duck, and Republicans will have to be the "anti-Bush" in order to win.

My prediction: if things don't get better in Iraq by the end of the year, look for an announcement by Warner. It may be another "Murtha" moment.

[blm]

5. I just predicted that in GD. Warner did just return from Iraq, and THAT

is what changes their minds. He started looking at it on the ground and with Kerry's words and warnings live and in color right before his eyes.

[beachmom]

8. Actually, I think he's been against this war for quite a while

When I hear pundits say "Republicans are telling me privately major misgivings about the Iraq War", I just KNOW they're talking about some of the older, more moderate Republicans like Warner. I have been hearing that Warner has been just SICK about the loss of life of men and women in our state and not just this year. I think that when Warner debated Kerry on the Senate floor, he privately supported Kerry's plan. He was just playing devil's advocate, and expressing any nagging doubts he had about setting a date for withdrawal.

Now mind you, this is all mind reading on my part, but I just view Warner as being a tradition conservative realist -- and none of those guys were terribly thrilled with this war from the beginning.

Seeing the disaster that Iraq is up close and personal this week only emboldened Warner to step up the rhetoric. Be on the lookout for it to intensify.

[blm]

10. I got that feeling during the debate, too. But going to Iraq will embolden

him to do the right thing, imo, and sooner rather than later.

[karynnj]

11. I wouldn't be surprised.

Warner was the one who focused on the point that Kerry's bill was binding, unlike the other and that there were interesting pieces to it. His comments of "timing is everything" in conjuction with the comment that it had interesting pieces would suggest that he wasn't there yet, but wasn't rejecting it out of hand. The idea that he was a devil's advocate may be true - he gave Kerry a setup to list concisely many of the features built into the his plan.

[ProSense]

17. Warner's comment

about 60 to 90 days is could be one of two things! If his call for a major shift after that period means withdrawal, that would be excellent. Still, it could be just another wait and see comment!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2866795&mesg_id=2866925

[ginnyinWI]

24. I do think that Warner has some integrity.

The way he was willing to engage in a colloquy with Kerry shows that he's willing to stay open to facts and realities and not just blindly follow the party line. Someone on Countdown said that at one time he was in line for Sec-Def, but that Rummy got it instead--a MAJOR mistake, probably made by Cheney, Rummy's old bud.

[TayTay]

6. Sen. Levin (D-MI) now wants a date set for withdrawal.

In a separate news conference, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, said he told Iraqi officials during the trip that he favored setting a date for a drawdown of troops.

Mr. Levin described a plan that Mr. Maliki announced Monday to increase security in Baghdad as “very tenuous.” The plan has no provisions for disarming sectarian militias, he said.

Mr. Levin added that the American ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, had told him during the trip that such warnings were a “useful message” to send to Mr. Maliki, though the administration had not endorsed the idea.

“I think the time is coming when the administration is going to deliver that message,” he said, “because it’s the only way, I believe, to change the dynamic in Iraq.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/world/middleeast/06capital.html?em&ex=1160280000&en=f8c343c951df7667&ei=5087%0A

Sen. Levin in June sponsored the other Dem Iraq amendment that called for the US to think about the process of withdrawing, maybe starting at the end of the year. It was a non-binding resolution, unlike the Kerry/Feingold amendment that wanted a legal withdrawal date. Levin is moving in Kerry's direction. It's not quite the quote below, but it's getting there.

"Mr. President, let me say to the Senator that I went to serve in Vietnam in 1968. There was turmoil in this country. Remember the Chicago convention, remember McCarthy, and Bobby Kennedy had been killed in June. In fact, I arrived back in Long Beach, CA, at the dock after the first deployment in the Gulf of Tonkin the night he was killed. It was the first radio words we heard. I remember that turmoil over the war. I remember Richard Nixon running for President with a secret plan for peace. I remember how people invested in the concept of peace. Years later, we read in Robert McNamara's book how he knew, as Secretary of Defense, while he was sending troops over there, that we weren't going to be successful. Now, from 1968 until 1975, when we left in that dramatic helicopter moment off the embassy, almost half of the people who died were lost in that period of time--for a policy that our leaders knew wasn't working.

I am not going to be a Member of the Senate in good standing and in good conscience and support a policy in Iraq that I believe is going to add people to whatever Iraqi memorial will be created, at a time where I am convinced this isn't going to work for them and it is not going to work for the Iraqis . I believe we have a moral responsibility to those soldiers who died to do our best to get it right, and I just don't believe staying the course, more of the same, is getting it right."

Sen. Kerry , 6/21/06 Senate Floor debate

Hmmmm, didn't Sen. Kerry serve in Vietnam from 1968 - 1969, that period the of time that the Sec of Defense, Robert McNamara knew the war was lost. The very people who sent him there to that hellhole, knew it wouldn't work. Hmmmmmm.

[whometense]

4. Tim Grieve's take on Warner in Salon

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/10/06/warner/index.html

A change of course in Iraq? Maybe, in a while

We hear that there are some elections coming in November. Virginia Sen. John Warner has apparently heard that too. Twenty-seven U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq so far this week, and Warner says it may be time for a change in U.S. policies there.

Well, almost.

As the New York Times reports this morning, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is warning that Iraq is "drifting sideways" and that United States may need to consider a "change of course."

Now? No. Warner says the U.S. may need to start thinking about Plan B in Iraq, but he isn't about to suggest that such thinking -- or the admissions of failure that would necessarily be a part of it -- occur before Nov. 7. "In two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and this level of violence is not under control, I think it’s a responsibility of our government to determine: Is there a change of course we should take?" Warner says.

-- Tim Grieve

[beachmom]

9. Yep. You can't expect him to throw Bush under the bus until

AFTER the election. Watch for it in December/January. And what about this vote in Iraq? I've heard nothing about that. That would take a considerable amount of organizing and security measures. How are they going to do that.

Related to Iraq, I just read this on Digby of a CBS report that is chilling. This is full scale genocide, and the Iraqi GOVERNMENT is doing it. So how exactly have things changed since Saddam's time? This just makes me sick. There's ethnic cleansing going on AND our troops are already there! But they're busy being killed themselves, propping a government that is killing its own people. What a mess and a tragedy.

An assembly line of rotting corpses lined up for burial at Sandy Desert Cemetery is what civil war in Iraq looks like close up.

The bodies are only a fraction of the unidentified bodies sent from Baghdad every few days for mass burial in the southern Shiite city of Kerbala, CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports.

They come from the main morgue that's overflowing, relatives too terrified to claim their dead because most are from Iraq's Sunni minority, murdered by Shiite death squads.

And the morgue itself is believed to be controlled by the same Shiite militia blamed for many of the killings: the Mahdi Army, founded and led by anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The takeover began after the last election in December when Sadr's political faction was given control of the Ministry of Health. The U.S. military has documented how Sadr's Mahdi Army has turned morgues and hospitals into places where death squads operate freely.

The chilling details are spelled out in an intelligence report seen by CBS News. Among some of the details of the report are:


-- Hospitals have become command and control centers for the Mahdi Army militia.
-- Sunni patients are being murdered; some are dragged from their beds.
-- The militia is keeping hostages inside some hospitals, where they are tortured and executed.
-- They're using ambulances to transport hostages and illegal weapons, and even to help their fighters escape from U.S. forces.


Iraq's Health Minister, Ali al-Shameri, is a devoted follower of Moqtada al-Sadr. He disputes the report's claims.

[wisteria]

7. I heard his comments on the news last night and I said to my husband

just wait, this is going to be another Kerry was right moment. It is interesting that he is giving them a DATE to get things straightened out and even more interesting is why and how he decided on the 90 days. I understand waiting until after the election, but his date goes beyond that. I also heard that he said, maybe there should be another vote, to determine if the Iraqi's want us to stay or want us to leave.
Imus is Imus, you can't trust him to be loyal to anyone unless they are doing something for him and his wife.Or, he supports someone with a different POV, like McCain.
Did you catch the segment with Santorum? Absolutely, nauseating.If Imus love Ricky so much, let him run in his state. We want him out of PA.

[karynnj]

12. You mean you disagree

that PA should re-elect him because he helped Deidre on the autism bill, that he then implies wasn't a natural thing for him to be for. (as it was for Dodd) Imus needs to listen to himself - PA should vote for Santorum because he kisses up to Imus?

[ProSense]

13. His assessment was extremely bleak:

"Warner said he sees the next 60 to 90 days as most critical juncture"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061005/ap_on_go_co/congress_iraq_1

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2326666#2326706

[ProSense]

14. Now Hagel is echoing

Kerry's words:

US Senator Hagel in Vietnam criticises "unwise decisions" in launching Iraq war

22 minutes ago

HANOI (AFP) - Prominent US Republican Senator Chuck Hagel criticised "very unwise decisions" in going to war in Iraq, during a return visit to Vietnam where he served as a soldier in the late 1960s.

"The horrors of the war remind me of the folly of war," the Nebraska senator said during a visit to Vietnam, reflecting on his wartime service there as an infantry squad leader in 1968.

"War should always be a last resort," he told a Hanoi press briefing.

"Leaders of nations should never commit a country to war unless they have carefully thought through the consequences of that action."

Hagel said he had been one of the few US Congress members to ask "some very significant questions about going to war" in Iraq before it started, adding that "Iraq is a far more complicated situation and country than Vietnam."

"But we are where we are," he said. "We are not going to go back and unwind some very unwise decisions that were made.

"We have to deal with the realities that we now face. And that's what we are doing and that's what's going to be required to try to bring some semblance of stability and security not only in Iraq but in the Middle East."

more...

Love the last two lines though: let Bush off and stay the course!

If he really wanted to face reality, he'd be calling for withdrawal!

[whometense]

15. Who will actually

give Kerry credit for getting there first?

I'm not holding my breath.

[karynnj]

16. I wonder how people who have not seen as much of Kerry

immediately assign the words, "war is a last resort" to Kerry. (Even reading it - I hear his voice!

[karynnj]

23. From the NYT, one answer : NOt Biden

"Democrats, who have been using their fall election campaigns to tap into intense voter dissatisfaction with the way that Mr. Bush has handled Iraq, quickly seized on the Warner remarks, circulating them in e-mail messages to reporters. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, convened a conference call on Friday afternoon to hammer home the theme that even Republicans believed that the administration must change course. “Warner’s statement is an important, important statement and, I hope, a turning point,” Mr. Biden told reporters.

He that at least two Republican colleagues other than Mr. Warner had told him that once the election was over, they would join with Democrats in working on a bipartisan plan for bringing stability to Iraq. Echoing Mr. Warner’s language, he said, “I wouldn’t take any option off the table at this time. We are at the point of no return."

Gee, Biden wasn't on my list of Democrats who voted for Kerry/Feingold. This puts in context the comment he made. Next, you know he will sound like he wrote Kerry/Feingold. (His plan has ONE Senator behind it.

[Blaukraut]

18. It's only a matter of time

before the majority of the Senate is going to echo Kerry's plans in one form or another. They already know, privately, that it's the only option.

[JI7]

19. Imus' wife only married him because he was famous and had money

i always think it's funny when he makes fun of women's looks. he regularly did the same to Elizabeth Edwards. he also made fun of Teresa by calling her crazy.

i still don't like it that Kerry goes on his show. i don't think he has much influence. i hope Kerry starts trying other things. from the looks of it he will be on Bill Maher's show for the first time. Howard Stern might be better also although it might be a small "controversy" and people will make issues of how he went on a show that is offensive to women.

i think he should consider many local stations, especially in rural areas.

[karynnj]

20. There may be some other Republicans - some "confided in Biden

Would anyone hear say anything in confidence with Biden?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2549490

[wisteria]

22. I doubt it. n/t

[cadmium]

21. Debate on redeployment

Does anyone have a clip or link to the colloquy between John Warner and John Kerry during the debate on the Kerry Feingold Iraq timetable??