It's time to bring U.S. troops out of Iraq By U.S. Senator Russ Feingold Wisconsin State Journal June 2, 2007 With so many Americans now calling for our troops to come home from Iraq, it's hard to understand what is standing in the way of more members of Congress supporting an end to this disastrous war. One of the biggest obstacles to ending the war isn't a matter of policy, but a matter of facts giving way to fiction. The facts are simple: Congress can bring our troops out of Iraq by setting a date after which funds for the war will be terminated, forcing the safe redeployment of our troops before that deadline. The fiction, however, is that instead of safely redeploying our troops, efforts to end funding for the war would somehow leave our troops stranded on the battlefield without the support and supplies they need. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The safety of our servicemen and women in Iraq is paramount. It's a myth that ending funding for the war puts our troops in harm's way. Congress will continue to give our troops the resources and support they need as long as they are on the ground, but by specifying a time after which funding for the war would end, it can force the president to bring the troops home. As former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger recently testified before Congress about this approach to ending the war, "There would not be one penny less for benefits of the troops" and "there would not be one penny less for supplies or support." The Senate took a similar approach in 1993, when Senators overwhelmingly supported efforts to cut off funding for the flawed military mission in Somalia. Without question, Somalia in 1993 differs in many ways from Iraq in 2007, from the scope of the mission to the reason for that mission in the first place. What hasn't changed, however, is Congress's constitutional power to end a military mission, and its ability to use that power without endangering the safety of our brave troops. Our troops in Iraq have done their job professionally and heroically. But we cannot afford to keep sending our servicemen and women into a war that was started -- and is maintained -- on false pretenses. An indefinite presence of U.S. military personnel in Iraq will not fix that country's political problems. Keeping our brave troops in Iraq indefinitely is also having a devastating impact on our national security and military readiness. We are weakening, not strengthening, our national security by continuing to pour a disproportionate level of our military and intelligence and fiscal resources into Iraq. The president refuses to acknowledge this reality, and has no intention of reversing the current misguided, open-ended mission. But Congress can heed the call of Americans and do what the president refuses to do: End the war. I recently joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in offering an amendment to end funding for the war, with three narrow exceptions, by the end of March 2008. I was very pleased that a majority of the Senate's Democratic caucus, including Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, supported that effort. To bring our troops out of Iraq, we simply need more members of Congress to do the same. It's time to separate fact from fiction in the Iraq debate. Everyone wants to make sure that our troops in the field get everything they need. We owe our troops a tremendous debt of gratitude, and we will never leave them high and dry. That support is absolutely consistent with efforts in Congress to safely redeploy the troops by using Congress' power of the purse to end the war. In the November elections, the American people made it clear that they want our troops out of Iraq, and it is up to Congress to respond. Congress must not allow the president to continue a war that has already come at such a terrible cost. It's time for Congress to end this devastating war, and finally bring American troops out of Iraq.