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Senator - Congratulations on the win.
I noticed in the WaPo article the following tidbit:
"After it was clear that the effort to shut off debate would fail, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) switched his vote from yes to no, a parliamentary move to allow him to seek a new vote later."
Not being familiar with Senate procedure, I wonder about this. Appears to my untrained eye that Frist will wait for some of the Senators to leave for the holidays and then call another vote. Anyone know whether this is possible/likely?
Posted at December 16, 2005 10:40 AM in response to CLOTURE VOTE THIS MORNING
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I'd like to address the assertion that there are "no valid comparisons" between Vietnam and Iraq.
In both cases, we were led into war on the fiction that our national security was at stake. In Vietnam, the justifications were the old "domino theory" and the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin "incident". In Iraq, the justifications were the alleged WMD (these allegations are now known to have been manufactured of whole cloth, but were presented as "facts" at the time), including "imminent" nuclear capabilities, and alleged ties to al Quida (which were later denied but are still thought to be true by some of the public).
And, as in Vietnam, we now find ourselves occupying a country without sufficient troops to secure it, facing a seemingly endless guerilla war against people who simply want us out of their country. As then, our current leadership (if I may dignify them with that term) has no clue as to how to extricate our troops from an increasingly unpopular war. "Training the Iraqis" sure sounds a lot like "Vietnamization" to me. The same exact issues were raised in both wars: that we need to send more troops or to withdraw immediately.
As one who was of draft age during the Vietnam era, I find the similarities striking.
Posted at August 18, 2005 8:59 AM in response to Anti-War Imagery and the Iconography of Hate
