Warner Watch

One thing I didn't notice before: John Warner voted for Sen. Webb's readiness bill. At one level, this may be just comity with a fellow Virginian's bill. But at another level, this could be a significant crack in the armor. If nothing major is done this time around, obviously these kinds of bills and ideas will be coming back around in September. Sen. Warner, who I always considered the key Senator in the GOP on these issues, has now stated his willingness to vote for - not just talk about - meaningful policy around Iraq. This certainly puts him in a better class than Sens. Lugar and Voinovich and Domenici, who are all talk. Or maybe they're waiting to vote for that supa-awsom "Pretend To Adopt The Pretend Hard Deadlines of the Iraq Study Group" bill and nothing else.

Warner was extremely quiet about this vote, so any Republican looking for political cover wouldn't have known that they could hide behind his vote. He just went out and did it. Didn't make a big speech or a conference call to reporters. Just voted to support the troops. Which is exactly what this quite narrow bill was. To hear it from Sen. Webb:

A clear majority of the Senate—56 Members – sent a strong message today in favor of ensuring responsible deployment cycles for our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. I regret that we did not reach the 60-vote margin that would have allowed this amendment to prevail. It was offered in the spirit of bipartisanship. It was offered with the intention of protecting the well-being of our troops.

“A Republican filibuster kept this amendment from passing by an up-or-down vote. Americans are tired of this kind of posturing. The troops and their families don’t want to hear about political, procedural maneuvers. What they really care about are results. They are looking for concrete actions that will protect the well-being of our men and women in uniform.

“The question on this amendment is not whether you support this war or whether you do not. It is not whether you want to wait until July or September to see where one particular set of bench marks or summaries might be taking us. The question is this: more than four years into ground operations in Iraq, we owe stability, and a reasonable cycle of deployment, to the men and women who are carrying our nation’s burden. That is the question. And that was the purpose of this amendment.”

The admakers are going to have a field day damning those who voted against this (Sen. Cornyn, I'm looking at you). John Warner's up this cycle and he maybe doesn't want the popular Webb campaigning against him and maybe that's all this is about. But at some point, Warner will have to go public. He did so today, in a small way.

P.S. My prediction is still that this Pretend to Adopt the ISG Report amendment from Ken Salazar and Pete Domenici will end up passing, even though, if the President were to take the unusual step of actually listening to Congress and following through on the amendment's goals, would be the worst possible situation.

Many would like to reduce the U.S. commitment to something like half of today's troop presence there. But it is much harder to find a mission for the remaining 60,000 to 80,000 soldiers that makes any sense militarily....

The more we shift out of combat missions and into training, the harder we make the trainers' job and the more exposed they become. It is unrealistic to expect that we can pull back to some safe yet productive mission of training but not fighting -- this would be neither safe nor productive.

If the surge is unacceptable, the better option is to cut our losses and withdraw altogether. In fact, the substantive case for either extreme -- surge or outright withdrawal -- is stronger than for any policy between. The surge is a long-shot gamble. But middle-ground options leave us with the worst of both worlds: continuing casualties but even less chance of stability in exchange. Moderation and centrism are normally the right instincts in American politics, and many lawmakers in both parties desperately want to find a workable middle ground on Iraq. But while the politics are right, the military logic is not.

David Broder just threw up in his mouth.