On Wednesday morning, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) walked onto the Senate floor and committed an act that for him is highly unusual: He voted with the Democrats on Iraq.
The measure, offered by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., was a nonbinding statement of support for a new Iraqi political model consisting of a central government in Baghdad and three semiautonomous regions for the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Isakson was one of 26 Republicans who supported the Biden plan, making the 75 to 23 result the biggest bipartisan showing since the Iraq debate began in January.
"It really acknowledged that the continuing violence in part is a product of the lack of reconciliation, which is the reality of making that government work," Isakson said of the Biden proposal. "I didn’t see anything in that that was inconsistent with what we ought to all want, and that is a reconciled Iraq with a functioning government. If you have reconciliation, the odds are you won’t have the violence or you won’t have as much of it."…While Isakson was dining with the soldiers, Democratic presidential candidates debated the Iraq war at a New Hampshire forum. None of the top three contenders — Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Barack Obama (Ill.) and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) — would commit to a total U.S. withdrawal within five years.But all three, Isakson noted, have been advocating a cutoff of U.S. funds for the war.
"They’ve got themselves in a great big corner," Isakson said with a chuckle.
One significant war-related development, he noted, was last week’s assertion by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before the United Nations that "the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed. Iran is just really memorializing themselves as bully No. 1 and a major problem," Isakson said. Ahmadinejad’s defiant stance also underscores the region’s volatility, he said, bolstering the Republican view that the United States must remain a strong presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
 September 30, 2007
Dear Senator Isakson,
I’m writing for several reasons. First, I appreciate your thoughtful vote on Senator Biden’s non-binding statement on the partitioning of Iraq. While I’m not sure that I think that the future governmental structure in Iraq is any of our business, I am glad to see you voting for a bi-partisan measure and would like to encourage you to consider each vote in the Senate on it’s merit, rather than block vote based on the President’s wishes. President Bush and the Congress that supported him made a mistake in invading Iraq in the first place. I don’t fault the Congress for that – you were voting based on the information you had. I’m now convinced that the Executive Branch was not recommending war based on their information. They were jury-rigging information to support a war they wanted to fight. It would take a courageous Republican Congressman to thoroughly investigate the facts and reach that conclusion. I would hope you’d take time to look at that data through non-partisan glasses and at least consider that you, as well as the rest of the country, were lead down an expensive and irresponsible path. While you may think that you represent a Republican State in the Republican South, there are plenty of people you represent who are "still Southern, and still Democrats." We might even accept the term Liberal were it not so degraded by the Republican Party as to be unrecognizable in any form other than an epithet. We are neither Communists nor "hippies." We are patriotic Americans who love our country and her heritage. We still believe that separation of church and state is a cornerstone of the American ethos. We do not accept the "Unitary Executive" notion of the Neoconservatives and Vice President Cheney. We do not read the Constitution as supporting the Bush Doctrine of aggressive pugilism or policing the world. And we certainly do not support the suspension of the Geneva Conventions or un-Warranted Domestic Surveillance. We have a loftier view of America – a country dedicated to fairplay and humanity in its dealings with the world and all of its people. But my main reason for writing is to encourage you to resist the pressure for even more American aggression in the Middle East. The drive to "bomb Iran" currently being mounted by the Bush Administration and their friends at the American Enterprise Institute is not a well considered idea. It’s a Plan driven by an ideology of radicals. Some are Zionists using our country to serve theirs – Israel. Some are after Middle Eastern Oil rights. Some are American Dominionists, people who have tired of our Constitution and long for an American Empire. Such people say that those of us who urge caution don’t see the danger. That’s not true. We see it, but we also see a great danger in what President Bush and his associates propose – an unsupportable American Hegemony. I encourage you to support a return of America to the world community and the American Constitutional agenda. While I am not a Conservative myself, I long for a rational Republican Party rather than what your Party has become. Georgia is a conservative place and I would expect my State to be represented by Conservative Congressmen. I would not, however, expect for our Congressmen to support the impulsive and ill-considered bombing of Iran just because Iran has a crazy government. There are crazy governments all over the globe. Unfortunately, for the last several years, we, ourselves, have been pretty crazy too. I agree Iran is a problem requiring serious attention. I do not agree that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have either the skill or patience to deal with that problem. That "executive" task has now fallen to the Congress. It’s time for Congress to lead – not follow… Sincerely, 1boringoldman
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Check out the web site voxverax.blogspot.com/ It has an article that if it is true that Sadaam was willing to go into exile with 10 billion dollars rather than go to war, look how much it has cost in lives and money doing it Bush’s way. This should raise an alarm in all of us.