Nelson, Hagel Deliver Reid Victory on Iraq

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Nebraska’s two maverick Senators — one a Democrat, the other a Republican — tipped the scale in favor of Democrats on Tuesday in a crucial reversal of the chamber’s showdown over whether to force President Bush to curtail U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Switching their votes to support Democratic language setting a nonbinding goal for the United States to end all combat missions in Iraq by March 31, 2008, Sens. Chuck Hagel (R) and Ben Nelson (D) provided Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) with the two votes he needed to keep the withdrawal language in a $121.6 billion supplemental war spending bill. The vote came just hours after Bush threatened to veto the measure.

Two weeks ago, the duo’s votes instead helped Republicans deliver a 48-50 defeat to Reid’s attempts to limit the U.S. mission in Iraq.

This time the 50-48 vote came out in Reid’s favor as the Senate rejected a Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) amendment that would have stripped the timetable from the bill, along with a requirement that Bush begin redeploying troops within months of enactment.

After the vote, Reid praised Nelson and Hagel for their switch. “I so admire the courage of the new voters we had on this,” he said.

Nelson’s turnabout was perhaps the most surprising, given that Hagel, a fierce critic of the White House’s handling of the Iraq War, indicated Sunday that he likely would not continue to support the Senate GOP leadership position that setting a target date for a troop pullout would be like telling insurgents when the U.S. will surrender.

Though Nelson joined all but one Republican March 15 in rejecting the entirety of the Democratic Iraq resolution, he said he still was struggling a few hours before Tuesday’s vote on what to do. Then, just a half-hour beforehand, Nelson announced in a press release that he would oppose the Cochran amendment, despite his opposition to setting a “calendar date for withdrawal from Iraq.”

“While the intent may be to remove the nonbinding withdrawal date, the amendment goes beyond that,” Nelson said in the statement. “It would also remove several other critical provisions, including language acknowledging that the situation in Iraq has become a civil war and calling for diplomatic and political engagement on the part of both the Iraq and American governments.”

Ending speculation about his plans, Hagel took to the floor Tuesday and declared that the Iraq resolution in the war spending bill was the “responsible way” for Congress to assert its prerogatives.

“This idea that somehow you don’t support the troops if you don’t continue in a lemming-like way to accept whatever this administration’s policy is, that’s what’s wrong,” Hagel said. “This language establishes a limited U.S. military mission in Iraq that focuses on the things that we should be doing.”

Prior to the vote, Democrats reached out to both Democrats and Republicans who voted against the resolution previously, said Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Durbin said rehashing the issue was “an important vote for us because it will give us a good signal of whether there will be meaningful Iraq language in this bill.” Indeed, language limiting the U.S. mission in Iraq almost certainly will be sent to the president after the two chambers reconcile their different versions.

But Durbin indicated that the House’s language setting an August 2008 date certain for withdrawal from Iraq was unlikely to pass muster in the Senate. “We’re going to have to work out a compromise in conference,” he said.