In an interview with PoliticsTV, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., discusses the votes in his chamber for efforts to expand children’s health coverage and punish “hate crimes.”
President Bush has threatened to veto the children’s health bill. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is among the House lawmakers this week who urged Bush not to follow through on his threat. “[I]magine the person that stands at the doctor’s door and not allow children to go through — the president of the United States,” Eshoo said. “… We should pass this and say a prayer that the president will come out of his cloud and sign the bill.”
Earlier this week, I traveled to Iraq’s Anbar province to visit our troops and see with my own eyes the remarkable changes they are making possible. … Last year at this time, Anbar was all over the news. Newspapers at the time cited a leaked intelligence report that was pessimistic about our prospects there. … But local citizens soon saw what life under al Qaeda meant for them. The terrorists brutalized the people of Anbar and killed those who opposed their dark ideology. So the tribal sheiks of Anbar came together to fight al Qaeda. They asked for support from the Coalition and the Iraqi government, and we responded.
Together we have driven al Qaeda out of strongholds in Anbar. The level of violence is down. Local governments are meeting again. Young Sunnis are joining the police and army. And normal life is returning. The people of Anbar have seen that standing up to the terrorists and extremists leads to a better life. And Anbar has shown that improving security is the first step toward achieving economic progress and political reconciliation.
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In the Democratic radio address, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called attention to this week’s sixth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks and then scolded Bush for not finishing “the job of destroying al Qaeda” and then for “misleading us into an ill-planned war in Iraq.”
This week, President Bush will send General Petraeus to Congress to report on the war — but before the report arrives in Congress, it will pass through the White House spin machine, where facts are often ignored or twisted, and intelligence is cherry-picked,” Reid said. He added that the report presents a yet another chance to re-evaluate Bush’s flawed Iraq policy and shift the focus to “fighting a real, effective war on terrorism.
“If President Bush again refuses to do so, it will be up to the Congress to show him the way – and that is exactly what Democrats intend to do.”
Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American troops in Iraq, is scheduled to testify before Congress next week about the progress of military operations there. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has a few questions that he thinks Petraeus should have to answer.
Edwards posed them in an interview with Josh Marshall of the liberal blog Talking Points Memo: “Has there been significant political progress? If not, can you give us any indication that you see that progress coming? … If the answer to those questions is ‘no’ [Edwards said he believes they are], how many American troops, how many American lives are we going to lose? How many more billions of American taxpayer money are we going to spend waiting for them to do something?”
In the Senate, meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is promising “another whack at Iraq” come Sept. 17-18. In an interview with PoliticsTV, Reid also discussed the search for someone to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, among other topics.
Senate Republicans are “protecting the president rather than protecting our troops” by denying up-or-down votes on Iraq-related legislative actions, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday as he vowed to force the GOP into a literal filibuster over the issue.
“[W]e’re going to work on this amendment until we get an up-or-down vote on it,” said Reid, D-Nev. “… If it means staying in session all day tomorrow and all day tomorrow night, that’s what we’re going to have to do. … The American people deserve an open, honest debate on this war.”
Reid’s decision came after liberal activists like those at OpenLeft started demanding that the Senate’s Democratic leadership call the bluff of “obstructionist” Republicans who are using procedural tactics to stall debate without actual filibusters.
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