The Senate Armed Services Committee is currently meeting to discuss the Iraq war. You can watch the questioning of Rumsfeld, General Myers, General Abizaid and General Casey on C-SPAN 3 and join the live discussion here.
Thanks to zander and rba for providing this link to their prepared statements.
USA Today has a round up of what’s occurred so far this morning:
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Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee’s senior Democrat, said there was “no military settlement without a political settlement.”
He called for Iraqis to not keep putting off a vote on the drafting of a constitution. “Failure to adopt a constitution … shows a lack of will,” he said.
“We must demonstrate to the Iraqis that our willingness to bear the burden…has limits,” Levin said. At the same time, he said he did not support at this time a U.S.-set timetable for a U.S. exit strategy. “That policy would be counterproductive,” Levin acknowledged.
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Mindful of polls showing heightened public discontent over the Iraq war, Senate Democratic leaders gathered their rank-and-file Wednesday to discuss strategies for pressing the administration on Iraq.
“It’s been a long time since there’s been a serious look at the administration’s policies in Iraq,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat. “That’s unfair to the American people.”
In the House, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Jane Harman of California, the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, introduced a resolution that calls on the president to develop a specific plan to improve the training of Iraqi security forces.
They said they fear the military is going to “break under the strain of continued operations.”
Both the Senate meeting and the House resolution are part of an increased effort by Democrats to sharpen their attacks on the president’s war policies.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., gave a speech Tuesday in which he accused Bush of “misleading statements and premature declarations of victory” in Iraq and prodded him to change course.
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Last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tried to introduce a measure that would have required the president to submit a report to Congress detailing a strategy for success in Iraq that would allow U.S. troops to return home.
“Each passing day confirms that the war in Iraq has been a grotesque mistake,” she said on the House floor before Republicans blocked her effort.
On Wednesday, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., called the Democrats’ rhetoric “reprehensible.”
What’s really reprehensible, Rep Cantor, is this damn war and the way it’s been justified and conducted.
