Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On the Growing Support for the Feingold-Reid Proposal May 16, 2007 “Today the Senate took another step toward acknowledging the will of the American people, who want to end this misguided mission in Iraq. A majority of Senate Democrats are on the record clearly stating that the President’s Iraq policy is a failure and that we need to take real action to change course. Keeping 150,000 American troops in the middle of an Iraqi civil war both hurts our national security and impedes the ability to reach a political solution in Iraq. We must continue to ratchet up the pressure on the President and supporters of this irresponsible war to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq so we can refocus on those who attacked us on 9/11.” Senator Feingold originally introduced the Feingold-Reid legislation on April 10th to safely redeploy the troops by March 31, 2008 after which funding for the war would end. With 29 Senators supporting the Feingold-Reid amendment today, the support for changing course in Iraq has grown considerably since thirteen Senators voted in favor of the Feingold-Kerry amendment to the Defense Authorization bill last June, which only set a date certain for redeployment. In August 2005, Feingold became the first Senator to propose the idea of a timetable for redeployment from Iraq.

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