Joe Lieberman: “I rise this afternoon to encourage President Bush to go ahead and veto the supplemental appropriations bill that…”

“I rise this afternoon to encourage President Bush to go ahead and veto the supplemental appropriations bill that Congress has sent him this afternoon because of the language in that bill on Iraq that I consider to be bad for our troops and dangerous for our country. The legislation that Congress has passed, in my opinion, represents the worst of all worlds. As I have said before, if people feel the war in Iraq is lost, or if people feel it is not lost but not worth fighting for, then what they ought to do is act to end the war. This legislation would do no such thing. It would not end the war in Iraq. It will not require the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq. It will not cut off funding for the war in Iraq. On the contrary, what this legislation proposes to do is something far worse. It would handcuff our soldiers with an inflexible and arbitrary set of restrictions--restrictions that would take life-and-death decisions about how, when, and where our troops can fight away from those troops and their commanders. It would substitute the judgment of politicians in Washington for the judgment of our military commanders on the ground. That is wrong. What is more, this legislation will impose on our soldiers in Iraq a binding deadline of October 1, 2007--5 months from today--to begin withdrawal.”