HorsesAss.Org

I wonder when the Joel “Global Warming Is A Problem” Connelly is going to meet the Joel “Let’s Build A New Freeway On The Waterfront” Connelly.

Just askin’.

I ALMOST FORGOT…

Joel’s a friend of the blog, so consider this post just friendly needling.

JOEL RESPONDS:

“When you unleash an additional 50,000 cars a day onto Seattle city streets, and onto I-5, they’re going to spend hours and hours a day belching pollutants into the atmosphere.
How do you square your position with its potential impact on Seattle’s airshed . . . and on Pioneer Square, the first Seattle neighborhood liberated from automobile culture.
‘Suggest you might devote some critical examination to the governor’s talk-it-over position on global warming rather than taking shots at those who have consistently urged action.”

This is what Frank Chopp would like to see on your waterfront. He’s calling up architects, soliciting drawings, gathering ideas, all with one purpose: to convince Seattle voters that a brand-new, gigantic freeway on the waterfront can be good urban design. From what I’ve seen, he’s got his work cut out for him. The sketch above is not my creation; its an honest-to-God drawing by WA-DOT of what they call Option 9.

And it’s Frank’s baby. Too bad its an ugly baby.

The structure goes sidewalk to sidewalk, with Alaskan Way (the surface street you see on the waterfront) put underneath the new viaduct. The entire space on the waterfront is swallowed by concrete. From Ivar’s front door, it’s 25 feet to the concrete wall of the viaduct. This is perhaps the most drastic change in Option 9.

Although it isn’t clear in the drawing, the new viaduct will be fitted with sound barriers on both sides. What does this mean? The view cherished by so many drivers will be history. It’s perhaps the most-liked element of the current structure. The “people’s” view while driving on the thing will be replaced with…

…a new park, or at least that’s the plan. I’m a bit skeptical. The late Jane Jacobs, who had a lot to say about cities, was never a big fan of parks. That is, there is a history of cities building parks that become magnets for crime. Seattle has parks that work, and those that don’t. An expansive lid over a freeway that’s only accessible by skybridge does not seem like the kind of park that will be successful over time.

James Vesely wrote this in the Sunday Times:

In the next few days, there’ll be another bear in the woods. Perhaps a new viaduct design will emerge that will be pleasing to the eye, if not to the mayor.

I bet James has the inside track from the pro-rebuild folks (the Seattle Times is staunchly pro-rebuild). I betcha the new viaduct design will look a lot like the drawing above. WA-DOT and the folks in Olympia will do anything to manipulate voters in the days before the election. They said they’ll pull funding for the ‘surface plus transit’, and they said they won’t fund a tunnel no matter what. They want a ‘re-build’, and they’ll do whatever they can to secure it.

How long will Seattle voters allow themselves to be jerked around? How long will Seattle pols be content to be bullied by committee chairs in Olympia? Will Seattle’s waterfront be subjected to Frank Chopp’s hideous Option 9?

A backlash is brewing in Coffee Town.

The hobos recognize you.

Downtown’s homeless and vagrant population like to hit up tourists for small change. And the business crowd, and party-goers too. Sometimes, they hit up the locals. Like me!

My latest exchange with a hobo went like this:

Hobo to tourists: Hey, got any spare change?

Tourists: (No response)

Hobo to me: Hey got any-

Me: No, sorry.

Hobo: Oh hey, I know you, that’s cool… (continues muttering to himself)

Some downtown hobos don’t even ask me for change anymore. As a downtown resident, I’d like to think I’ve earned it. It took a few years, but it’s an honor nonetheless.

David Horsey has a commentary in Sunday’s Seattle PI on Rep. Jim McDermott, Rep. Jay Inslee, and Rep. Dave Reichert. At one point, while interviewing Reichert, Horsey gives us a telling glimpse into the eyes and soul of Sheriff Hairspray:

[Reichert] described a meeting with anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan during which one of her companions pointedly asked Reichert how many more soldiers’ lives he was willing to sacrifice to the Iraq War.

Recreating the moment, Reichert trained his hardest gaze on me as if I was that upstart activist and said, “That question offends me. Do you know how many partners I’ve lost as a cop?”

What the hell? What does the number of police partners Reichert lost have to do with soldiers dying in Iraq? And where is the offence in a concerned citizen pointing out that (1) soldiers are dying in Iraq and (2) as a Congressman, Reichert shares in the oversight responsibility, and consequences, for our actions in Iraq?

I have several theories about Reichert’s inappropriate (if not bizarre) response. I’ll call them the stupid theory, the fiction theory and the unmanaged anger theory.

The stupid theory is that Riechert simply fucking up his own talking point. He meant to use a talking point along the lines of this one from his DaveReichertForCongress web site:

We may disagree on the timeframe of that, but as a police officer who has lost friends and partners in the line of duty, I do understand how difficult it is for society to make sacrifices in the name of freedom and keeping Americans safe.

Nothing in the written version of the talking point would suggest that Reichert could be offended, per se, by the peace activist’s question. If the web site properly captures the position, Reichert should have sympathetically disagreed—something like this: “I understand your concern about more soldiers losing their life in the line of duty–I’ve experienced the tragedy of losing law enforcement partners. Still, I disagree with you about the best way to achieve a free and safe America in a way that minimizes such sacrifices.” Instead, Reichert forgot or misunderstood the proper response, and invoked faux outrage instead of sympathy.

The fiction theory is that the event didn’t really happen this way at all. Rather, the details given to Horsey constituted a “creative intrepertation” of a more mundane exchange. The purpose was simply to use the interview with Horsey as another opportunity to shape his image as playing the staring role in “Tough Guy Sheriff Goes to Washington.” We’ve seen this before from Reichert…you know, like the bus driver flipping the bird at Bush incident where Reichert bragged before a group of Republicans only to change the story to something more mundane when the “tough guy” version looked damaging.

The unmanaged anger theory is that Reichert really was insulted and outraged, and, therefore, responded irrationally. Reichert is widely known for being sensitive to criticism, being overly defensive when his failures are brought to light, and having a short fuse. In the face of such “insolence,” I can imagine Reichert reacting with a mixture of anger and defensiveness that clouded is thinking, resulting in a response that was a non sequitur. How dare they blame him for deaths in the Iraq war!

We saw this behavior in 2004 when Reichert walked out on a debate and refused future debates with his Republican primary challengers. We saw a little bit of this anger during the 2006 campaign season in his debate with Darcy Burner.

While still King County Sheriff, Reichert sometimes displayed this type of behavior. For example, after an African American man killed a white officer (Deputy Richard Herzog) with his own gun in 2002, Reichert made a series of bizarre media statements. As Geov Parrish put it:

King County Sheriff Dave Reichert bristled last week after the fatal shooting of deputy Richard Herzog—a white officer, allegedly “executed” by a naked, unarmed African-American man with the officer’s own gun. Here’s Reichert: “I’m just going to be blunt about it and get to the point: Race isn’t important. . . . We’re sick and tired of being labeled as racist.”

In other words, Reichert equated discussing race with calling people racists. And then he shut down all discussion.

The sheriff has since backpedaled….

At the time, I was struck by Reichert’s repeated use of the word “execution” to describe the actions of Herzog’s killer. The naked, stoned-out-of-his-gord killer shot Herzog during a struggle after Herzog’s gun fell out of its holster…not particularly the circumstances that go with the word “execution.”

Reichert’s lashing out at the media came on the heals of criticism after Seattle Police shot and killed Aaron Roberts, an African American man. Reichert’s angry, illogical statements prompted the Seattle Times (22 June 2002) to editoralize…

King County Sheriff Dave Reichert irresponsibly lobbed his own grenade when he rushed past an official denunciation of the killing to rail against African- American leaders who have frequently charged law enforcement with using excessive force against minorities. The sheriff’s emotions later cooled to those more befitting a leader, but it was too late. A debate has begun whether the region has seen its first incident of reverse racial profiling: the executing of white police officers by black men….

During Reichert’s entire career as a cop, only five King County officers died in the line of duty. Herzog’s death was the only non-accidental death of an officer in the line of duty under Reichert’s administration. (The only other death was of Deputy Mark W. Brown who died in a motorcycle accident in 1999.)

No doubt, Reichert took Herzog’s death hard. But there was more to it—the King County Sheriff’s office (i.e. Riechert) was taking some heat in Herzog’s death. His death was avoidable. Herzog was killed with his own handgun, in part, because he was allowed to carry a holster not designed for his weapon. The result was that his weapon fell out of the holster during the struggle. Later the state Department of Labor and Industries investigated the incident and fined the King County Sheriff’s Office for safety violations. The root of the problem was mismanagement and a failure to follow established procedure (Seattle Times Sep 9, 2005, B3). (Reichert appealed the Labor and Industries decision and lost.)

Reichert’s statements to the media following Herzog’s death were made under a cocktail of sorrow, some guilt, and denial. And he reacted angrily and irrationally.

My hunch is that Reichert’s reaction to the peace activist involved that same cocktail of sorrow, guilt, and denial. By pointing out the Congressman’s shared responsibility for the death of American soldiers in Iraq, the activist triggered the same kind of angry, illogical, and embarrassingly inappropriate retort.

A new wrinkle in the Viaduct story:

If the viaduct is torn down and replaced with surface streets and transit, the state might contribute just over $1 billion for construction work, said Senate Transportation Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island.

That’s less than half of what the state has pledged for replacing the viaduct with another elevated highway, and could leave the city on the hook for nearly $1 billion to complete a surface-street project, based on some projections.

Amazing. I have no idea where Sen. Haugen gets $1 billion for the ‘surface plus transit’ option as opposed to over $2 billion for the Mistake On The Bay. The money is there for ‘surface’, it’s just a matter of greedy suburban Democrats keeping their paws off Seattle’s infrastructure money appropriating it.

What a cynical, arrogant move by Olympia lawmakers. First they demand we vote on two options (one of which they say they won’t accept) and then they pull the purse strings in a show of power.

“Build what we want, or no money.”

Voters may well approve the Viaduct rebuild, but they may not. In fact, I hope Seattle citizens send a double barreled message to the Olympia by voting “No, and Hell No.”

I’m heading off to Florida for a week to take my daughter to visit her grandma. Expect light posting from me, but maybe Darryl, Will and Geov will pick up some of the slack.

Likewise, I won’t be on 710-KIRO this weekend. Frank Shiers will be filling in for me tonight, and Turi Ryder will be filling in on Sunday.

As I’ve stated before, I tend to agree that a tunnel option for replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct is politically dead… but I can’t help but thinking. The state rejected Mayor Nickels’ recent four-lane hybrid tunnel-lite proposal, arguing that using the shoulders as exit lanes during peak traffic would be unsafe. So… why not just eliminate the exits altogether?

Stick with me here.

We keep hearing that 99 is a vital North/South thruway, and thus the governor insists that she won’t support any option that reduces capacity. Yet if the Viaduct is bounded by a surface street to the South and the four-lane Battery St. tunnel to the North, then obviously much of the traffic must be local.

So instead of talking about a “viaduct” why not consider a “bypass” — a two-mile, four-lane tunnel through the downtown waterfront that eliminates the northbound exits and southbound entrances at Seneca and Western? This way all that vital N/S traffic can continue to flow N/S, while local traffic is diverted to improved surface streets.

Without the need for extra wide shoulders, or the cost of building four ramps, the “hybrid bypass” solution would be even cheaper than Nickels’ tunnel-lite, while ensuring that thru-traffic travels along the waterfront faster than it does today. And local drivers that would have used the existing exits would be served by improved surface streets and transit options, unburdened by the need to accommodate existing N/S thru-traffic.

Yeah, maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. But one of things that has always annoyed me about the current debate is the total lack of imagination. Surface-plus-transit option? That’s just for hippy-dippy whackos. A “gold-plated” tunnel? It’s an unaffordable gift to developers. We’ve had a double-decker freeway running through our waterfront since the earth was created, and if it’s good enough for God then it’s good enough for me, by golly. Or at least, that seems to have been the intellectual process.

Ridicule me, a man with no engineering or traffic expertise, for suggesting a hybrid bypass. But at least I’m trying to think creatively.

Two months after John McKay was fired as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, the reason for his dismissal remains a mystery.

One of the most persistent rumors in Seattle legal circles is that the Justice Department forced McKay, a Republican, to resign to appease Washington state Republicans angry over the 2004 governor’s race. Some believe McKay’s dismissal was retribution for his failure to convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the race.

Ohmygod… “persistent rumors.” Of course, the occasional time I base a post on rumors, I’m slapped down in the comment thread for being unserious, uncredible and irresponsible. But who am I (a wrong-headed, fatuous drunk) to question the journalistic rigor of the Seattle Times?

Truth is, that is the scuttlebutt buzzing through Republican circles, and it certainly is worthy of reporting in a major daily, for while I think it more likely the product of wishful thinking than actual fact, the rumor does provide a window into the mean-spirited, vindictive and Machiavellian mindset that permeates much of the GOP establishment and its right-wing base. Remember, this is a party that took its rhetorical cues from the likes of Evergreen Freedom Foundation president and aspiring-fascist Bob Williams (who throughout the controversy emphatically called for King County Elections Director Dean Logan to be summarily jailed,) and our good friend Stefan over at (un)Sound Politics, who when he wasn’t foisting his paranoid fantasies on an insufficiently critical press corps, chose to fan the flames of inter-party hatred by repeatedly comparing KC Executive Ron Sims to brutal African dictator Robert Mugabe. (A comparison, I suppose, that had nothing to do with their mutual skin color.)

Given the vehemence in which some in the GOP would brand all Democrats as crooks, thieves and enemies of the state, it becomes difficult to discern insincerity from sheer nuttiness. Take, for example Building Industry Association of Washington executive vice president Tom McCabe, whose organization financed and conducted much of the crackerjack detective work that misidentified hundreds of citizens as illegal felon voters, and then offered no apology for their victims’ public humiliation.

In a column titled “Good Riddance,” McCabe said McKay “had a disastrous six years as U.S. Attorney. Two years ago, he steadfastly refused to investigate voter fraud despite overwhelming evidence.” McCabe also said he had “urged the President to fire McKay.”

Overwhelming evidence of voter fraud, huh?

We had two recounts under extraordinary public scrutiny, five months of hearings and depositions, and a two-week trial before a cherry-picked judge in a Republican county… that ended with all allegations of fraud being “dismissed with prejudice.”

Overwhelming evidence? Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed repeatedly vouched for the integrity of the election and election officials, while KC’s own Republican County Prosecutor Norm Maleng not only failed to find enough evidence to launch a local investigation, he had his own representative on the Canvassing Board vote to certify the election results.

We had a gubernatorial election that ended in a statistical tie, but which Chris Gregoire won fair and square under the bipartisanly adopted statutes that govern elections and election disputes. But some Republicans were willing to take the governor’s mansion by hook or by crook, and when McKay, Reed and Maleng refused to abuse the power of their offices to steal this election on behalf of Dino Rossi and his corporatist patrons, McCabe, Williams and others set out to purge their party of the traitors, and destroy both their reputations and careers.

The celebratory rumors surrounding McKay’s departure — unsubstantiated as they are — present an unsavory image of a party seeking solace in retribution. And the propensity for threatening opponents and heretics alike with criminal, civil and vigilante justice provides a revealing glimpse into the psyche of a party whose Manichean world view quickly devolves even the most stolid policy debate into a battle between good vs. evil. I suppose it might have been merely a feeble attempt at a jest when during the heat of the gubernatorial election controversy my good friend Stefan twice accused me via email of “abetting a government cover-up,” but his use of a legalistic term clearly implied wishful thinking, if not an actual threat, that I should be criminally punished for exercising free speech. That is the sort of vengeful spirit that welcomes McKay’s departure.

Was McKay really fired for refusing to misuse his office to pursue trumped up allegations of election fraud? I’ve got no idea. But the very fact that so many local Republicans clearly wish the rumor to be true is both disturbing and revealing.

Joel Connelly, a Horse’s Ass “Friend of the Blog” and Drinking Liberally attendee, absolutely savages Mayor Nickels’ tunnel in today’s column. It’s not a surprise; Joel’s been pro-rebuild for a long time, but I can’t help thinking the anti-tunnel trash-talking is played-out.

Why? Simply put, the tunnel isn’t going to happen. It’s going to lose at the polls. Plus, we don’t have the money. We have projected money, but we don’t have cash money. And Frank Chopp hates the tunnel, so it’s “game over.” Joel’s column is titled “It’s time for Nickels to bury tunnel,” as if the thing isn’t already politically buried.

I’d like to see columnists from every paper realize that we’re down to two choices. Do you want an elevated rebuild? Yes or no. The incessant hacking at Nickels and his dead tunnel just short circuits the debate. However, Joel Connelly does address the “surface plus transit” option:

The crowning consequences will come if there is no tunnel, no new viaduct and the tear-down, don’t-replace folks win out.

It’ll send thousands of cars toward Pioneer Square, which in the ’70s was the first place downtown rescued from highway culture. (Garages were to replace historic buildings.)

And, if the predicted 12 hours of daily gridlock comes to pass on Interstate 5, thousands more cars will crawl along the freeway, belching greenhouse gases into the air shed of America’s greenest city.

While cars would go through Pioneer Square on a the new Alaskan Way surface boulevard instead of a Viaduct, lots of people would be able to use new transit investments. That’s a good thing for the historic district. As for cars on I-5 and their greenhouse gases, I’m confused. Do cars somehow emit no gases when their cruising at 40 mph on the waterfront? Oh well… I patiently wait for the column in which Joel interviews Cary Moon or Ron Sims, two prominent “surface plus transit” supporters.

Lastly, I can think of no better way to fight the highway culture than to not build highways.

“Record for hottest January isn’t broken … it’s smashed“

Huh. Our good friend Stefan takes every report of a snow flurry or a chilly breeze as an opportunity to derisively mock incredibly stupid people like me for believing the overwhelming consensus of the world’s climatologists. So I suppose if he’s intellectually consistent, we should be seeing a post from him today acknowledging that January’s weather proves beyond a shadow of a doubt — and entirely on its on, in isolation of all other evidence — that the earth is warming, and that man-made carbon emissions are a contributing factor.

I look forward to reading that post.

• The new show meant to compete with “The Daily Show” is awful. I’m not a player-hater: I laugh at Clinton jokes, Kerry jokes, and PJ O’Rourke. But “The 1/2 Hour News Hour” is unwatchable garbage.
• Nick Beaudrot really nails the situation with the Sonics.
• Go skiing with your congressman! Really!
• Rep. Dave Reichert fundamentally misunderstands the war in Iraq:

The Iraqi insurgents aren’t the Wehrmacht, they aren’t Johny Reb and they aren’t the Hessians. Geez, it’s like Reichert deliberately picked every non-relevant example from American history and threw it in a blender. Threw in a reference to Osama bin Laden for good measure.

But he’s soooooo moderate!!

• Remember the four foot tall Labor Secretary? He’s got a blog. Here, he explains why balancing the budget isn’t such a great idea.
• Olbermann: Four! More! Years!
• Here’s a less Seattle-centric Viaduct post. One note: it’s really, really unlikely that we’ll find Native American artifacts. It is likely, however, that we’ll find Doc Maynard’s house keys.

FoS is advocating a ‘No-No’ vote on the pointless and stupid (and expensive) vote this March. From a press release:

Friends of Seattle announces that it will recommend to its members that they vote NO on Measure 1 to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel and NO on Measure 2 for an elevated replacement.

[…]

After the state’s two intolerable choices are voted down by the voters, our political leaders, at all levels, must work to find a solution that accounts for the goals and values of a livable and sustainable urban community. Friends of Seattle urges the city to work with the county and state to develop a real solution that:

(1) replaces the Viaduct with a pedestrian-friendly Alaskan Way surface boulevard;

(2) expands bus, vanpool, carpool, and water taxi services;

(3) accommodates the movement of freight;

(4) preserves city-owned land on the waterfront for public use as a park;

(5) minimizes the environmental impacts of major construction on Puget Sound; and

(6) accords with City and County commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I wasn’t sure Friends of Seattle had the balls to take a stand against the tunnel. I’m glad they did. What is Governor Gregoire and Speaker Chopp going to do when BOTH measures fail?

I can’t wait for election day, when we can send two bad ideas (the gigantic rebuild and the tunnel) to the dustbin of civic history.

WSRP Chair Luke Esser

There’s a press release on domestic violence up on Attorney General Rob McKenna’s web site that isn’t all that interesting in itself until you scroll down to the bottom and read the contact information: “Luke Esser, AG Outreach Director.”

Um… exactly how long is Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser going to continue to collect a state paycheck while also being on the payroll of the state GOP? How long does it take to finish up his existing business in the AG’s office, and how hard would it be for the office to temporarily function without an Outreach Director? I mean, either way he reports directly to McKenna, so I’m pretty sure McKenna could still get his job done while only paying Esser once.

And doesn’t Esser’s double-dipping — a state party chair also receiving a state paycheck — raise the eenciest bit of concern?

I dunno. Just askin’.

Statement by Rep. Adam Smith

H. Con. Res. 63 – Disapproving of the decision of the President announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

February 15, 2007

Madam Speaker:

“It has been nearly four years since the war in Iraq began — four-and-a-half since President Bush and his team in the White House started the effort to launch our nation on the path to this war. We learned a lot during that time frame, but two things stand out. First, the war effort has failed to achieve the outcome the President hoped for, instead creating problems he clearly felt would not come to pass. Even he admitted that he is dissatisfied with the way the war has gone. Second, at every step along the way, beginning with the way the President got us into the war, right up to the President’s latest plan to once again increase the number of U.S. troops in Baghdad, President Bush and his administration made mistake after mistake — failing to an almost incomprehensible level to learn from past errors or to demonstrate even a modest level of competence in prosecuting this war. Countless books from all points on the political spectrum lay out in painful detail all the mistakes this administration made in Iraq.

It is way past time for this Congress to stand up and say enough. We disapprove of what President Bush is doing in Iraq.

But our friends on the other side of the aisle claim that such a statement in meaningless. This is an astounding assertion. The United States House of Representatives — the elected voice of the people of our nation — stating clearly and on the record how they feel about the single most important policy issue of our time is meaningless? This opinion, expressed by the minority party, perhaps explains the utter lack of oversight and accountability that they employed when they were in charge — standing by and acting as mere cheerleaders for the President’s actions in Iraq as he made mistake after mistake. The other side of the aisle at least has a consistent record of believing that the opinion of Congress, a body our Constitution set up as a coequal branch of government with the Executive, is meaningless.

As much as I disagree with this conclusion as to the proper role of Congress in expressing its opinion on the Iraq War, I do understand this initial reluctance to pressure President Bush to change course. In a time of war we all want to stand behind our Commander-in-Chief as a first option, and the powers of the presidency make it difficult for Congress to, in a clear-cut straightforward manner, direct the President in the conduct of war. But the President’s record of mistakes in Iraq makes it clear we can no longer cling to this first option, and, difficulties notwithstanding, the cost of continuing down the same path the President has been pursuing in Iraq has reached the point where Congress must at least try to force a change in direction.

This effort should logically begin with a clear statement from the House that we disapprove of the way the President is conducting the war in Iraq. That is what this resolution does. With this vote members can no longer hide behind, “on the one hand, but then again on the other” statements. We can all mutter about things we don’t like in Iraq, but an official on the record vote is required to make that disapproval clear. Do you support the way President Bush is conducting the war in Iraq? Yes or no.

And make no mistake about it the President’s plan to increase the number of U.S troops in Baghdad represents no change in policy. It is stay the course, more of the same. In the last year we made large increases in the number of our troops in Baghdad twice already. Both times violence went up in the city, and as we have begun the current increase in troops that violence has once again increased. The lesson should be clear at this point — United States military might will not stop or even reduce the violence in that city.

Listening to the arguments against this resolution helps to understand why our President insists on making some of the same mistakes over and over again in Iraq. We are told that our fight in Iraq is a clear-cut battle against the same type of Al Qaeda-backed extremists who attacked our nation on 9/11 and that we are defending a worthy Iraqi government against these evil forces. If this were true, I would support whatever increase in troops was necessary to defeat that evil force.

But it is not even close to true — it is instead a dangerous attempt to paint a black and white picture on a situation that is far, far more complex. Baghdad is caught in a sectarian civil war. Both Shia and Sunni militias are battling each other as well as United States forces and the Iraqi government. It is a complex web of frequently changing alliances and interests that makes it impossible for our troops to separate good guys from bad guys. This is why our troops cannot stop or even reduce the violence. And the Maliki government we are being asked to support spends as much time acting like they are supporting the Shia side of the civil war as they do acting like they want to bring Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds together to form a stable Iraq.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq and we should continue to target them, but that effort will require a far, far smaller U.S. military presence than we have there today. Currently we are expending an enormous amount of resources in Iraq, most of which is going towards putting our forces in the middle of a chaotic civil war where our efforts do not advance and may even retard our fight against Al Qaeda. That massive military commitment reduces our ability to pursue Al Qaeda in the dozens of other nations where they have influence — most glaringly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This larger, more important fight is not solely or even primarily military. Diplomacy and other efforts to move disaffected Muslim populations away from joining Al Qaeda are a huge part of our battle, and we need to enhance those efforts. But we can’t, because we’re hamstrung both by a lack resources — financial and strategic — that are tied down in Iraq, and because our open-ended occupation of Iraq continues to undermine America’s standing in the world.

Instead of sending more troops to Baghdad the United States policy in Iraq should be to instruct our military leaders there to put together plans to as quickly and responsibly as possible reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. We need our troops to focus on Al Qaeda and its supporters, not to be bogged down in a sectarian civil war that is only tangentially related to the larger fight against Al Qaeda.

The first, critical step in this process of changing our policy in Iraq is this resolution. Congress must make its disapproval of the President’s policy in Iraq clear and on the record.”