warwoundfakerkerryliar and demohacks lost again: Senate Votes Against Iraq Deadline
By DAVID STOUT
Published: June 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 22 — The Senate voted overwhelmingly today, after a long and emotional debate, against setting a firm deadline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
The 87-to-13 vote reflected not only deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats but within the Democratic ranks as well. Many Democrats voted against the measure, ensuring its defeat by a lopsided margin.
Immediately after rejecting the measure offered by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, both Democrats, that would have set a July 2007 withdrawal date, the lawmakers turned to a second, more generally worded measure also intended to scale down the American commitment in Iraq. A vote on that measure was expected shortly. The vote on the Kerry-Feingold measure, an amendment to a military-spending bill, was preceded by hours of debate that blended high emotion and the courtly courtesy that is a Senate tradition.
To set a withdrawal date would tell American troops and the Iraqi people "we're going to possibly pull the rug out from under you," said Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"It would be impossible to imagine a worse time than now" to set a timetable for withdrawal, said Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader. |
