The focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements. This amendment was a stunt designed only to score cheap political points while what we should be doing is focusing on the deadly serious challenge we face in Iraq. It's precisely this kind of political game-playing that makes most Americans cynical about Washington's ability to solve America's problems. By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against this empty politics. I registered my views on the ad itself the day it appeared.
All of us respect the service of General Petraeus and all of our brave men and women in uniform. The way to honor that service is to give them a mission that is responsible, not to vote on amendments like the Cornyn amendment while we continue to pursue the wrong policy in Iraq.

I agree with DA in LA. This is pathetic.

Then again, you could say this about Feingold and a bunch of other supposedly progressive Dems. Has Reid put a gag order on them? Why are they all holding back? What's up with that? Have they given up, do they believe that they don't need to fight, or is this a ploy to sucker the GOP into a mistaken sense of triumph and complacency before Dems go on the attack?

I head John Murtha the other day say that he now believes that it's pointless to fight the GOP right now because they need to tack right to please their base for the primaries, but that once the primaries are over, they'll have to tack to the center to appeal to swing voters. I've heard this from some reporters, too. Makes some sense, but not nearly enough to justify holding back for ANOTHER Friedman Unit. How long are we going to keep that powder dry? It's just end up blowing up in Dems' faces if they fail to use it.

I say fight them NOW, to make their attempts to give their base some red meat vastly harder. Disabuse them of their delusion that they can tack hard right now, and then tack to the center in a few months. Force them to settle on a long-term position NOW by making it a very public and nasty fight. Make it impossible for them to reinvent themselves in the spring as anti-war moderates. And NOW is the time to do that, not then. And it's the Dems who need to do that.

It seems to me there is an inconsistency in your thinking when you call the moveon vote a "a stupid, toothless resolution" and still you criticize Obama's no vote with "Obama can't be bothered to show up and vote against it?"  Either that or you think it was important for him to vote on a stupid, toothless resolution.  Am I missing something?

Probably not, but we can hope.

Personally, I found the ad to be childish and somewhat akin to the petulant cry of a 3 year old not getting what they want.

What is factually wrong with the MoveOn Ad?

When they vote to condemn the MoveOn Ad they are saying what Gen Petreus said was to be believed--that we are winning the war and the statistics he states are factual?

It works for the Republicans because they don't have to worry about truth and integrity, but in this instance it fundamentally fails in its approach since General Petraeus was not telling us what he thought, he was repeating the arguments of the president, his commander in chief, and his direct military superior.

I don't read moveon.org so it's hard for me to comment intelligently on their position, but in my opinion they're wasting their time and energies going after anyone but George W. Bush.  If anyone is guilty of betrayal, it is surely he.  

You can condemn everyone beneath him for remaining loyal and putting forth a unified front, but when it comes to the military especially, you're talking about people who are sworn to take this man's orders.  And until evidence of high treason can be openly established, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, the people in the military will do their very dammdist to carry out the president's orders, to the best of their ability.

I know that George W. Bush is a traitor to the Republic, I don't have enough evidence to prove it, yet.  But when I do, I surely won't be going after General Petraeus, or any of the previous generals who came under his orders, no I will maintain my focus on the president, for it is he who is responsible, and it is WE THE PEOPLE who are responsible for him.  In a very real sense, it is the people who have failed General Petraeus, by sticking him with the Commander in chief that just barely qualifies to be a private in his army assigned the task of shining the general shoes.  It must be a mortifying experience for any military men of earned rank.

It's common knowledge that the Petraeus report was rewritten by the White House, so it really wasn't the general's report at all, it was the White House's interpretation of the Petraeus report that was being presented to the Congress by General Petraeus, hence any legitimate criticism must be aimed at the White House and nowhere else.

If the people and our representatives in Congress don't have the guts to remove this president, and wrestle control of our country back from a dictatorial president, and we are reduced to attacking his underlings, well then we have failed. And when you fail, best that you admit your defeat, and Move-on to the next battle.  

The Iraq war is lost, at least until 2009.  By then we'll have a Democratic president and our military will still be deeply entrenched in Iraq, so where do we go from there.  We can waste our time and energies demolishing our own Democratic candidates, those who don't call for immediate withdrawal, which all thinking people must know isn't going to happen, or we can make the best of a very bad situation.

I just watched a new freedomswatch.org commercial on cnn, condemning Move-on.  Nice job of giving the people who have no platform other than pretending to support our military, a springboard to launch their failed agenda into 2008.  No doubt the Republicans will be playing this story for all it's worth up until the election.  Sadly many Americans will fall for it, yet again.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 50 times over with the same rhetoric, then you deserve to lose your country to dictatorship and graft.  As George said "won't get fooled again," at least not the marginally intelligent people.

I'm glad Obama didn't show up for the vote, too bad all the other Democrats didn't follow suit, refusing to participate in an obvious waste of our Congress's time, would at least show some spine.  Did Hillary and Dodd get up there and filibuster?  Well then there dissenting votes mean next to nothing.  The Congress has betrayed us as well, let's keep the focus on the real bad guys shall we.  We have met the enemy, and they are the people we elected.

Al Qaeda has no chance of defeating the United States of America, the only ones who can do that are the Americans.  We've always been our own worst enemy, going back to the Revolutionary war, it was the Americans who remained loyal to King George who were the greatest threat.  Ironically we seem to be reliving this scenario 131 years later.

Down with King George!

The Dems have used up every last shred of slack they call for when explaining and excusing their pathetic actions to do right by their duties and trust.

They expend more energy trampling the support they have now to chase after superficial, meaningless and transiet approval from parties that wish to destroy them.

1. This is a snippet of what I said over at my own place on this business:

   Personally, I think the ad was foolish not for what it said but because it gave the wingnuts an opening to launch the kinds of bogus attacks they have, successfully diverting some on the left into wasting time and energy going "oh no no, I'm not with them" (which only legitimizes the original attack by treating it as something requiring response) instead of getting on with opposing the insanity that surrounds us - that being a tendency on the left about which I have griped for years. So I will not be apologizing for or answering for MoveOn or its ad and beyond the tactical criticism I just made I will not be criticizing it. I'm just going to keep saying what I think in my words and for those I take full responsibility.

   
   
2. One good thing to come out of this vote is that you have a much better sense of who your real friends, the ones you can count on in the pinch, are.

3. It's little enough comfort, but imagine what the vote would have been under similar circumstances if this had been, say, 2004.

4. Praise be to MoveOn for not backing down, which is both strategically and tactically the best thing they can do right now. Backing down in the face of bullies will never, ever satisfy them.

That is not the the problem, IMO.

The problem, as I see it, is that, so far, there is nothing than collectively people are doing about this on a collective scale--and they know it.

Because... nearly everyone keeps saying that there is nothing that we can do about this on a collective scale--and they know it...

Because... nearly everyone is waiting for someone else to go first.

I believe they they will not change unless they are afraid of losing tens of millions of votes."

This is where I drew the line a few months ago. They lose my support unless they do what they were elected to do.

If they believe they will have the votes without doing what they were elected to do, and instead keep enabling Bush, then they have no reason to change and there is no effective difference between them and the rethugs.

I will not, two years down the road, be defending myself for supporting people who enabled Bush when they had the power to stop him.

And everyone will say, be realistic, it will never happen. Many will say "there is nothing that we can do about this on a collective scale" and say things like "better the modern Dem model than the modern GOP one."