Senator Hagel: "It's Alice in Wonderland" (Re troop "surge")

[cali]

From a Novak (retch) piece in today's WP:

Sen. John McCain, leading a blue-ribbon congressional delegation to Baghdad before Christmas, collected evidence that a "surge" of more U.S. troops is needed in Iraq. But not all his colleagues who accompanied him were convinced. What's more, he will find himself among a dwindling minority inside the Senate Republican caucus when Congress reconvenes this week.

President Bush and McCain, the front-runner for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, will have trouble finding support from more than 12 of the 49 Republican senators when pressing for a surge of 30,000 troops. "It's Alice in Wonderland," Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposal. "I'm absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly."

What to do about Iraq poses not only a national policy crisis but profound political problems for the Republican Party. Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops.

The recent McCain congressional delegation was composed of sophisticated lawmakers who have made many previous visits to Iraq. They do not minimize the severity of sectarian civil war. They left their meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doubting any "sense of urgency" after advising him that he must disarm the militias. They recognize that the national police, corrupt and riddled with radicals, constitutes an unmitigated disaster.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/31/AR2006123100931_pf.html

So even republicans are now saying publically that georgie is mad as a hatter. This is postentially good news for Senator Leahy's proposed Amendment to freeze funding at current troop levels. Unlike many others here, I don't think that all the republicans- particularly Senate republicans- are going to fall in line behind the little monster's troop increase proposal.

[Nite Owl]

1. This certainly does look good for

Leahey's amendment. 37 repukes? Leiberman is the only one who is agreeing with McCain that I have heard of.

[cali]

2. Yeah, I think it's a hopeful sign

that republicans like Hagel are willing to put things so bluntly. Luger has spoken in a similar veing, but the Congress has got to use the power of the purse to prevent bushco from his idiotic "surge" plan.

[htuttle]

3. After the Cosa Nostra's arm twisting is done...

...who do you suppose will still have the guts to say the Empire's out of gas?

I guess we'll find out...

[cali]

4. I believe that bushco's

arm twisting prowess has been seriously diminished by practical political considerations. The republicans look at the recent elections and can see 2008 approaching swiftly in the rear view mirror.

What exactly to you think bushco could do to twist the arms of Senators like Hagel and Lugar?

[FreeStateDemocrat]

5. Must be every bit as bad an idea as it appears to be when even the pukes start to oppose it openly.