DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:00 pm
A compromise Senate resolution disagreeing with President Bush’s dispatch of additional troops to Iraq will send “a very powerful message” to the White House, Sen. Ben Nelson said Thursday.
“We would hope the president and the Pentagon would listen,” Nebraska’s Democratic senator said during a telephone interview from Washington.
“It’s not just the president who has the responsibility to lead,” Nelson declared. “This is a check, maybe a rebalance,” of constitutional responsibility and power.
Nelson is co-sponsor of a resolution that has been revised in bipartisan negotiations to attract the support of sponsors of an alternative proposal authored by key Democratic leaders and Nebraska’s Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel.
As amended, the compromise resolution would require the Iraqis to accept responsibility for quelling domestic violence and begin to disengage U.S. troops from the middle of sectarian warfare.
Senate debate is likely to begin next week.
Nelson has been engaged in a series of meetings and phone calls in recent days attempting to help nail down the agreement. A log of his activity includes five meetings or telephone conversations this week with Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who has spearheaded the resolution now in play.
Last week, in a flurry of activity, Nelson logged phone calls to 16 Democratic senators on a single day.
On Thursday, Nelson pitched the compromise plan to the caucus of all Democratic senators.
Hagel, who talked with Warner several times about combining the competing resolutions, said he’s pleased with the result.
“I appreciated the willingness of Sen. Warner, Sen. Nelson and others to take a serious look at how we could work together,” Hagel told his weekly telephone news conference Thursday.
“I expect strong bipartisan support (and) I’m grateful to Sen. Nelson and others.”
The language in the operative resolution seeking to redirect U.S. military responsibilities to territorial security, counterterrorism, promotion of regional stability, and training, supporting and equipping Iraqi forces was essentially authored by Hagel.
Language requiring the Iraqi government to meet specific benchmarks for progress matches the strategy long championed by Nelson.
“We can’t get people on the far left and the far right together,” Nelson said, “but we can attract the middle of the Senate, Republicans and Democrats working together in broad bipartisan support.”
Hagel, who was returning to Washington from the funeral of Army 1st Lt. Jacob Fritz in Falls City when the compromise was announced Wednesday night on the floor of the Senate, said the proposal “makes a lot of sense.”
The agreement also gained the support of Hagel’s co-sponsors, Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del, and Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.
The resolution urges President Bush to “consider other options,” Hagel said. “More young Americans are dying every day, being maimed every day. Our standing in the world is being challenged every day.”
Fritz, who hailed from rural Verdon, was one of four U.S. soldiers abducted and killed in Iraq 12 days ago.
Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or at dwalton@journalstar.com.