As you know, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) delivered an extremely important speech on the floor of the Senate Monday night. Among other things, Lugar called on the Bush Administration "to downsize the U.S. military;s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options." Lugar also asserted that "those who offer constructive criticism of the surge strategy are not defeatists" and says we need to "move Iraq policy beyond the politics of the moment."Now, Virginia's Senior Senator, another crucial voice on Iraq policy, has weighed in supporting Dick Lugar:
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, praised Lugar's statement as "an important and sincere contribution" to the Iraq debate.
That's good to see, and a strong sign that Republicans have concluded it's time for us to start getting out of Iraq. We'll see what happens this fall, but as I've always said, the only way we were ever going to get out of Iraq was if REPUBLICANS started breaking with the President on this. Now, that appears to be happening. I strongly urge Sen. Warner to push ahead and help figure out a way to extract ourselves from the Iraq quagmire without doing any MORE damage to U.S. national security interests or to the people of Iraq.