Is Jon Kyl doing a remote job interview for the VP job

if Cheney leaves?

From a speech he made yesterday on the Senate floor [with some comments from me :) ] (pages S1269, S1270 and S1271 of the Congressional Record):

On the President's "new" strategy in Iraq -

My position is clear. I think we ought to give the President's strategy a chance to work. We asked him to come up with a new strategy. He has done so, and it seems to me that it is our responsibility as a Senate to give that a chance to work or to provide an alternative--not an alternative to leave but an alternative to win. There are plenty of ways to leave. We can begin leaving now and have it done in a year. We can leave in 6 months. We can leave to the border but not beyond. There are a lot of different ideas about how to leave, but an alternative is not how to leave but how to win.

[Senator, it's not a "new" strategy; it's the same failed strategy with more body bags. Also, Senator, "alternative" means just that, not "different words that express the same idea that we have."]

On the anti-war resolutions that have begun popping up in Congress -

Resolutions that are nonbinding nevertheless have consequences. They can't change the policy that is already being effected, the strategy in Iraq, but what they can do is send very powerful messages. First, they can send a message to our enemies. It seems to me the last message we want to send to the enemy is that the Congress does not support the mission in Iraq. Obviously that emboldens the enemy.

{snip}

Most importantly, a resolution such as this sends a message to our troops. It is a very powerful message and a very negative one...We are sending you into a place where you could well die, but we don't support the cause for which you are dying.

[Silent acquiescence is un-American. And given that thousands of American soldiers have died in Bush's War to Aid Halliburton's Bottom Line, silent acquiescence may be treasonous.

Furthermore, given the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians that have died as a result of Bush's War, silent acquiescence may border on crime against humanity.]

In essence, Senator Kyl seems to be saying that the only way to honor the American servicemen and -women who have given their lives in this war is to send more to sacrifice their own lives.

That's crap.

In other JK news, he supported militarizing space in a speech given yesterday to the conservative think tank/lobbying group, the Heritage Foundation. (Aviation Week)


[I don't know whether to refer to him as the "White House's water carrier on the Hill" or the "White House's Kool-Aid drinker on the Hill," but he's definitely more Bush's representative than Arizona's.]


I was going to write a post about the Scottsdale City Council's agenda item to approve turning back on photo radar cameras on Loop 101 at tonight's meeting, with some coverage of the legislative discomfort with that idea, but this was more interesting. :)

Later!