Sen. Ron Wyden takes heat [especially from MFSO members] for Congress not bringing the troops home.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
JEFF MAPES
The Oregonian

Although few senators can match U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden’s long record opposing the war in Iraq, it didn’t protect him from being thoroughly roasted Tuesday by angry anti-war activists at a town hall meeting in Portland.
The noontime event at Portland State University attracted more than 300 people, many of whom charged that the Oregon Democrat hasn’t done enough to end the war. The senator was also repeatedly verbally flayed for not supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“Do you have any idea how angry we are at the Democrats?” Joe Walsh, a Vietnam War veteran from Portland, asked Wyden as many in the crowd loudly cheered and applauded. Walsh noted that the death toll continues to rise while the Democratic majority in Congress fails to cut off money for the war. “How do you sleep at night?” he asked.

Wyden repeatedly cited his own record of opposition to the war, starting in 2002 when he was one of 23 senators to vote against authorizing the president to use force against Iraq. And he noted he was one of just 14 senators who voted against a bill to finance the troops this May after Bush vetoed an earlier funding measure that called for a troop withdrawal.

“Every single day I try to find additional ways to generate support for our cause of a timely, safe withdrawal” of the troops, said Wyden. “I try every single day to find another way to push that rock up the hill.”

The meeting was dominated by a wide variety of anti-war groups — from Military Families Speak Out to the Peace Action Committee of the First Unitarian Church — that have begun to turn on the new Democratic leadership of Congress as being insufficiently tough enough in taking on the Bush administration. While polls show most Americans oppose the war, many Democratic lawmakers have worried that abruptly cutting off military funding would expose them to charges that they are endangering the safety of the troops in a war zone.

When Wyden talked about how the Bush administration had gone “way over the line” in taking the country into the war, several interrupted him by shouting, “Criminals!”

The senator also received a skeptical reaction when he argued that trying to impeach the president and vice president would only divert Congress from other work and fail to gain enough votes anyway. And when Wyden insisted that Iran was responsible for supplying some of the roadside bombs that have killed many U.S. troops, several people booed.

“You’ve been listening to Cheney too much,” one woman shouted.

No one spoke up in favor of the administration’s policy in Iraq.

Some speakers did praise Wyden for being a consistent critic of the war and asked what they could do to build support in Congress for cutting off money. Wyden said he thought pressure would build to withdraw the troops after Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, delivers his report on the war in mid-September.

Wyden said he doubts Petraeus will be able to show much progress toward a stable government that is unifying the country, and he said there should be a “national mobilization” of anti-war critics to put pressure on Congress.

After his town hall, Wyden met privately with 10 of the anti-war activists and they talked more about how to bring pressure on Congress, according to Wyden’s chief of staff, Josh Kardon.

Kardon said he thought many activists were so angered by the war that they were failing to realize how few members of Congress are willing to simply cut off military funding.

Wyden “gets up every day trying to end the war,” Kardon said. “But he can’t change the law of physics.”

Still, several activists said they thought Wyden should do more to pressure Congress and the administration to end the war, including raising the threat of impeachment.

“What Bush and Cheney have done is criminal, and they should be prosecuted,” said Marlene Schaffer [member of MFSO], who has a son, daughter and husband serving in Iraq. When asked after the meeting if she was satisfied with Wyden’s explanations, she said: “I think it’s more lip service.”

Jeff Mapes: 503-221-8209; jeffmapes@news.oregonian.com