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Vets vow to watch all-night Senate debate

A group of Iraq war veterans opposed to the war have vowed to spend the night watching, in person, the Senate’s overnight debate over an Iraq withdrawal plan.

“We know a little something about battles that go through the night, so we are more than prepared to sit in the Senate for the entire filibuster to let senators know that by blocking this bill they are blocking the will of the troops and the will of the people,” said Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org.

Soltz may be speaking for some veterans, but two major veterans’ service organizations — the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars — have opposed efforts in Congress to force a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and side with Senate Republicans who are trying to block the amendment.

The Senate will be engaged in what Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called “an old-fashioned filibuster.” He promised to keep the Senate up all night and to have a series of votes to make senators come to the floor.

It is not clear how Reid’s strategy would force Republicans to change their minds. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, said he sees no reason for delaying what he views as an inevitable outcome.

“Any plan to leave Iraq before we have had a chance to understand the outcome of the troop surge tells the enemy, first of all, they have been successful and that their methods worked,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said. “Those individuals who were perpetrating the crimes of terrorism will come back and do them again. It gives them patience to wait us out.”

The purpose of the all-night session is to try to call attention to the fact that Republicans are blocking Senate Democratic leaders from holding a simple majority vote on Iraq policy and instead are using parliamentary maneuvers that require a 60-vote majority in the 100-member Senate to bring the issue to a vote.

“If the Republicans are going to play this procedural game ... then they’re going to have to live with the fact that the American people are going to be watching this all night,” Reid said.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., an Army veteran and one of the chief sponsors of the disputed amendment calling for the withdrawal of most combat troops from Iraq, said part of the reason he is pushing for a change in strategy is concern about the future of the military.

Reed called it a “nonrebuttable fact” that the U.S. military will not be able to continue having 160,000 troops in Iraq by spring without morale-busting measures such as 18- to 20-month combat tours and wide use of stop-loss orders to prevent people from separating from the service.

Reed, working on the amendment with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, said that if the end of the surge is coming by spring, “we should start thinking right now of how we do it.”

The Levin-Reed amendment would allow combat troops to continue training Iraqi security forces, protect U.S. and coalition personnel and engage in counterterrorism operations, but a withdrawal would be ordered for troops engaged in security operations beginning 120 days after the bill becomes law. The amendment does not order a specific troops cap and does not set a specific withdrawal timetable.

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Senate leader vows 48 hours of Iraq debate