Posted by
Liberty Cabbage on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 10:18:26 AM
On Monday, April 23 congressional Democrats settled on an agreement “to ignore President Bush’s veto threat and send him a $124 billion war spending bill that orders the administration to begin pulling troops out of Iraq,” with a final withdrawal goal of October 1, 2007.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) attacked the plan Tuesday on CNN, claiming it was “the first time I know of — in the middle of a war — that a country just announces that on a specific date it’s walking off the battlefield.” He added, “[I]t’s almost as if Americans want to say that we’re failing before our troops have a chance to get the job done.”
Kyl doesn’t mention that on two separate occasions during the Clinton administration, he voted explicitly in favor of setting “a specific date” for American troops to “walk off the battlefield”:
– In June 1998, Kyl voted in favor of amending the National Defense Authorization Act for FY1999 to “require the President to submit Congress a plan for withdrawing United States forces from Bosnia and Herzegovina if the Congress does not so act by March 31, 1999.”
– In May 2000, Kyl voted against removing a provision from Military Construction Appropriations Act of 2001 that struck provisions requiring that President Bill Clinton withdraw all U.S. ground forces from Kosovo by July 1, 2001.
Since then, Kyl has become a critic of timelines and has voted again and again to give Bush a blank check in Iraq.