September 17, 2004 - Do you remember the $87 Billion supplemental appropriations bill that passed last November? It included $18.4 Billion to reconstruct Iraq. Well, the Administration has come back to Congress looking for authority to spend $3.46 Billion on security in Iraq. Now George W. Bush is not looking for more money in this move. He just wants to spend part of the $18.4 Billion on security. There is plenty of money left in the reconstruction fund. He has only spent $1.14 Billion in the 11 months since the bill passed according to the State Department’s figures reported to the .Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

Some of the Senators did not like what they were hearing. One, a Marine combat veteran, said that the request "does not add up in my opinion to a pretty picture, to a picture that shows that we're winning. But it does add up to this: an acknowledgment that we are in deep trouble. … It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing, it's now in the zone of dangerous." Another Senator, a recognized foreign affairs expert often touted as a future Secretary of State said, "Although we recognize these funds must not be spent unwisely, the slow pace of reconstruction spending means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence the direction of Iraq."

Responding to the Senatorial criticism of the Bush record in Iraq White House Spokesman Scott McClellan said, “You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and handwringers who said it can't be done and every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong, because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future." You could put the exchange down to partisan sniping and counter fire except that the Senator’s comments came from Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican and Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana. There are some Republicans who can recognize the difference between facts and spin, between a firm pathway and a quagmire.

Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar are giving voice to the disquiet that many of us have been expressing for some time. The war in Iraq was declared over sixteen months ago but the fighting and dying goes on. The President refuses to admit the facts and sends his spokesman out to call the Senators “pessimists and hand wringers” even in the face of the National Intelligence Estimate he received in July warning him of what we already knew from the facts on the ground; that Iraq has slid down the slippery slope to civil war. The President cannot admit that the last year and a half have been a failure because he has staked his Presidency on success in the War on Terror. For him the War in Iraq is the center piece of his re-election campaign and that centerpiece is looking more and more like a plastic turkey – even to Republicans.

Senator Hagel is right. It is beyond embarrassing. It is beyond pitiful. It is dangerous and no one knows that more than the families of the 1160 coalition soldiers, 1026 of he Americans who have lost their lives in Dubya’s Excellent Adventure. They told us that the war would be easy. They told us that war would be cheap, paid for out of Iraqi oil. They told us that the Iraqi people were thirsting for us to liberate them and would greet us with flowers. The only flowers in evidence are those that families have placed on 1160 graves. Remember them on Election Day. If we are pessimists who are wringing our hands it is because George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have given us so much to be pessimistic about. If Republican Senators have become what Spiro Agnew called nattering nabobs of negativism it is because they see the facts for what they are rather than adopting the White House spin.