Hagel Fumes in Senate: "I don't think we've EVER had a coherent strategy in Iraq" [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 12:57 PM on January 24, 2007.

UPDATE: In addition to the Feingold speech, discussed below (second video), Chuck Hagel unleashed on his colleagues, challenging Bush (first video): "I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan.... There is no strategy. This is a ping-pong game with American lives."

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Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold tells his colleagues that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee didn't rise to the occasion before the Iraq War, voting for the "bizarre" response to 9/11 that was the invasion of Iraq and, more importantly, that their toothless plans to oppose Bush's continuation of Iraq are equally irresponsible.

Important point: Congress DOES have the Constitutional power and right to use "the power of the purse" to stop the war on Iraq.

The committee went on to reject the Dodd Bill -- the one with teeth, not the one that simply tells Bush that some in the Congress disagree with him -- which says that "prior to sending any more troops -- the 20,000 the president wants to put into Iraq, 17,000 of them into Baghdad, a city of 6 million people -- it would require a prior authorization by the Congress."

Fortunately, with each passing bill, the pro-teeth coalition is "surging" while the pro-gums caucus fades...

Here are the votes:

YES:

Dodd - Aye
Kerry - Aye
Feingold - Aye
Boxer - Aye
Obama - Aye
Menedez - Aye

NO:

Biden - No
Cardin - No
Nelson - No
Casey - No
Webb - No
Lugar - no
Hagel - No
Coleman - No
Sununnu - No
Corker - No
Voinovich - No
Murkowski - No
DeMint - No
Issacson - No
Vitter - No

Tagged as: iraq, democrats, senate

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.