Russ Feingold: “Mr. President, we have begun a debate that may ultimately be more consequential than the war debate we had in this…”

“Mr. President, we have begun a debate that may ultimately be more consequential than the war debate we had in this Chamber last October, which culminated in the votes of 77 Senators authorizing the President of the United States to go to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A negative Senate vote last fall, before our country was committed to liberating and reconstructing Iraq, would have weakened the President's leadership and made America less secure. But a vote against reconstructing Iraq now, with 130,000 American forces on the ground, American credibility before our friends and enemies at stake, and the enormous responsibility of helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country now on our shoulders, would doom Iraq's transformation to failure, with grave consequences for the entire Middle East, and devastate American leadership in a dangerous world. An extraordinary allied military campaign in Iraq overthrew, in 3 weeks, a Baathist regime that had ruled for three decades.”