Douglas Alexander: “with this political stunt tonight, the Senate has reached the approximate level of the Iraqi Parliament in dealing with…”

“with this political stunt tonight, the Senate has reached the approximate level of the Iraqi Parliament in dealing with the war on Iraq. There will be no more votes for a fixed deadline for withdrawal from Iraq at 3 a.m. than there would be at 3 p.m. This demeans and trivializes the foremost issue facing our country. It does not show the proper respect for the men and women who have been fighting there and their families. Here we are, issuing milestones, talking about benchmarks to an infant democracy on the other side of the world, issuing reports and report cards about how well they are doing on what we have told them to do, talking to them about why they haven't passed oil sharing and debaathification and why they have not had more elections, and we cannot come up, ourselves, with a consensus about what we are doing in Iraq. Here we are, the oldest democracy in the world, alleging ourselves-- the Senate--to be the greatest deliberative body in the world, and we are lecturing Iraq, a new democracy, an infant democracy. We are lecturing them for not coming up with a consensus when we can't come up with one ourselves.”