Democrat Proposes Making Withdrawal Date Secret(Pryor)

[maddezmom]

Source: Washington Post

Democrat Proposes Making Withdrawal Date Secret
Only Congress, White House and Iraqi Government Would Know Plan

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 27, 2007; Page A04

In one of the more unusual proposals to emerge in the Senate debate on Iraq withdrawal, Sen. Mark Pryor wants to keep any plans for bringing troops home a secret.

The Arkansas Democrat is a key holdout on his party's proposal to approve $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a goal of March 31, 2008, for winding up military operations in Iraq. Unlike the plan's Republican opponents, Pryor wants a withdrawal deadline of some kind. He just doesn't want anyone outside the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government to know what it is.

"My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress," Pryor said yesterday. A public deadline would tip off the enemy, "who might just bide their time and wait for us to leave," he said. "Then you'd have chaos and mayhem and instability."

Pryor said a classified plan would be provided by the president, shepherded by Senate committees and ultimately shared with Congress and Iraqi leaders. He is confident that the plan would remain secret, because Congress is entrusted with secrets "all the time."



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032602034.html

[sandnsea]

1. What enemy??

"The Iraqi’s are not our enemy. They didn’t have WMD. They weren’t producing WMD. They weren’t threatening us or our allies. They were not conspiring with the 9/11 terrorists. We have no direct security interest in Iraq.

Some day, we will have to set a date to leave. The generals cannot organize the removal of our troops and machinery without dates. If there are terrorists in the rest of the world who pour into Iraq after we leave, it’s because we fought the Iraqi’s instead of the terrorists.

The terrorists are regrouping in Afghanistan and Pakistan, what Time has dubbed "Talibanistan". They are not waiting for us to leave Iraq so they can pack up and plot attacks from Iraq instead of Afghanistan. That would be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious.

There is no enemy waiting to launch a secret counter-attack. There is nothing to "win" in a country that was never plotting against us in the first place. They just want us to leave. They just want their country back."

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?p=71

[Demeter]

2. Military Equivalent of Hayden's Farewell Symphony

Franz Joseph Haydn Works

"The "Farewell" Symphony n. 45 was composed, so the story goes, to allow players at Esterháza to leave the platform one by one and return to their families at home."

[Demeter]

14. From PMCarpenter's Commentary: "Senatorial silliness"

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/

Whatever it is they're smoking in Arkansas these days, Senator Mark Pryor is smoking more than his share.


"The Arkansas Democrat a key holdout on his party's proposal to approve $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a goal of March 31, 2008, for winding up military operations in Iraq," said a front-page story in the WP. "Pryor wants a withdrawal deadline of some kind. He just doesn't want anyone outside the White House, Congress and the Iraqi government to know what it is."


Yes, a literal "secret plan"; a secret withdrawal date, secretly held by about 600 individuals, at an absolute minimum, all of whom make a living with their mouths.


To make it through life in this uncertain world, we all cling to certain fictions meant to provide some level of emotional security. One of those communal fictions is that to rise to the U.S. Senate one must have at least a modicum of mature judgment, no matter what ideological plane he or she operates from.


Then comes a senatorial idea like Mark Pryor's to shatter it all.


"My strong preference would be to have a classified plan and a classified timetable that should be shared with Congress," said the senator Monday, with moronity aforethought. To announce a deadline would clue in the hostiles, "who might just bide their time and wait for us to leave. Then you'd have chaos and mayhem and instability."


The collective boneheadedness of those mere three sentences is awe inducing. It was no trifling, off-the-cuff concept, after which one quickly apologizes on grounds of hastiness. No, it was "thought" out, presented to the media and proffered for his colleagues' consideration in amendment form.


It seems almost silly to even bother countering such silliness, but on the other hand, silliness seems to have a way of assuming the armor of seriousness these days, so perhaps it is best to do so.


The thought that all 535 members of Congress would hold secret some fixed date of withdrawal is positively otherworldly. Yet the belief that Iraqi government officials -- most of whom are self-interestedly aligned with a warring sect -- would do likewise resides exclusively in some parallel universe. And if nothing else, wouldn't someone notice when the Humvees, one by one, every few days, started rolling back to Kuwait?


As for the combatants "biding their time" if given an announced withdrawal date, by and large that happens to be what they're doing now, which makes any withdrawal date -- scheduled or not, public or not -- meaningless. Which is to say, sooner or later we'll leave; and the combatants know that. Any secrecy behind the "when" makes not a whit of difference as to its inevitability, making a sectarian intermission, as things are, a reasonable strategic choice.


Finally, of course, the sheer blindness underlying a prediction of "chaos and mayhem and instability" unless we hang around for a while is nothing less than breathtaking -- prima facie evidence of the senator's sure and steady consumption of a reality-altering substance.


What's even more breathtaking, however, is that anyone would have to point these things out to a United States senator.


Mark, I understand Britney is out of rehab. So there's a bed open.

[kurtyboy]

16. Ho Chi Minh told the French, and they didn't learn--until Algiers

To Western eyes, it seemed inconceivable that Ho would make the tremendous sacrifices he did. But in 1946, as war with the French loomed, he cautioned them, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win." The French, convinced of their superiority, ignored his warning and suffered grievously as a result. Senior American officers similarly nurtured the illusion that their sophisticated weapons would inevitably break enemy morale. But, as Ho's brilliant commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, told me in Hanoi in 1990, his principal concern had been victory. When I asked him how long he would have resisted the U.S. onslaught, he thundered, "Twenty years, maybe 100 years--as long as it took to win, regardless of cost." The human toll was horrendous. An estimated 3 million North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988162,00.html

[Lasher]

3. I think we have had just about enough secrets for the last 6 years

I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of it.

[matcom]

4. a secret date that can be extended indefinately

in secret of course

[rodeodance]

9. rather like the last 4 years.

[w4rma]

5. That is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I can support the rest of what the WP listed of Pryor's stuff, but not keeping the big date secret.

"Though Democratic caucus members have expressed skepticism about Pryor's plan, he has stuck to his guns, pushing for an amendment that would require the president to supply Congress with a classified plan for stabilizing Iraq, including benchmarks for withdrawing troops, within 60 days of the enactment of the funding bill, and a progress report, also classified, every 90 days afterward."

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Assholio

Fuck Pryor. Can we have our republic back please? The one where informed citizens and their elected representatives make decisions?

[Thothmes]

7. Secret Date

Within a week of deciding what that date will be it will be posted on the net and will be seen on AL Jeezera (sic).

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. So, the military can't perform any sort of secret operation anymore because of the internets tubes?

Sorry. I don't buy that.

[Solly Mack]

8. uh...uh...uh...

never mind

[rodeodance]

10. well, Pryor will have company this week when he votes no (Lieberman)

[youngdem]

11. I think they'll still notice we're gone, Mr. Pryor, even if you don't tell them

"Heeeey, where's everybody going?" (scratches head)

:crazy: :rofl:


It really is an uncomfortable, fish on deck experience watching Blue Dogs flop around and struggle with their untenable positions. I hope Mr. Pryor ends up on board after he's done trying to have it both ways.

[sinkingfeeling]

12. Waiting for a call back from Pryor's 'military' staffer. I called his LR office who patched

me to Washington DC and the lady there could not answer any of my questions. The first was who exactly Sen. Pryor was referring to when using the word 'enemy'? The second, was why doesn't the Senator support the Democratic bill and then when Bush vetoes it, he can ask for his 'secret' withdrawal date? I stated that I had a request for financial support of Pryor's re-election sitting on my desk (which I do have) and that I, as an American citizen, wanted the troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible. I said that if Sen. Pryor wants a secret date, I suggest April 15, 2007. She took my name and phone number and said she'd have is aide call me when they got out of a meeting. We'll see.

[Javaman]

13. Be vewy vewy qwite, I'm pullin' out...heheheheheh...

Sigh.

The scene: Baghdad

The time: unknown

An eerie calm settles over a hot dry morning in the middle Baghdad. Friends and neighbors awake to an awkward sound: quiet.

Bewildered, people stand around aimlessly wondering what happened.

A mummer drifts through the crowd. It builds to a roar. Screams of happiness and joy fill the street. The Americans have left!!!

Women dance, men sing, candy and flowers shower down from the floors above.

quite suddenly a blood curdling scream shatters the merriment. Everything comes to a screeching halt. The moment is shattered.

Out into the street staggers an angry crying man. close friends inquire as to his distress, through his tears he spits out...

"they took all the toilet paper!!!"

The once joyous shouts of happiness are replaced with tears of frustration.

[kurtyboy]

15. Cripes I'm tires of all of the date rhetoric

I am thinking of the administration's (and the idiots who follow them) claim that to set a date would undermine our position.

If they were acting rationally (and I grant that they are not) they would see the inevitability of the American electorate's distaste for the occupation. No date needs to be set---we would just begin pulling out. Simple, and no "advantage" is given to our "enemies"

But they clearly do not give a tinker's damn about the voters, about the troops, or about our long-term national security.

Someone, somewhere, sometime should have by now articulated an actual strategy in our middle-eastern forays. I've not heard it yet in any valid form, even if some premises are controversial (the PNAC proposals come closest, but they lack substantive supporting arguments). No argument whatsoever has been offered. Nothing.

We just continue to react to events, and seem to forget this week what was proposed last week.

Our foreign policy has ADD, and it needs treatment.


Knock Knock

Who's there?

Dude with ADD.

Dude with ADD who?

Dude with---HEY! You wanna go surfing?!?!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

17. A secret plan to end the war....

I've heard that before. :freak:

[hedgehog]

18. Pity the poor people who write for the Onion - how in the world can

they hope to top this!

[pigpickle]

20. This story should be entitled "Democrat Proposes Caving In"