State Senate Wastes Time On Foreign Policy Resolution Opposing Iraq War

Wasting your tax dollars, that is--the state of Colorado has no authority to take positions on foreign policy (even though places like the People's Republic of Boulder think they do). Individual politicians can blather all they want, but this type of political grandstanding does little to grapple with the state's own issues, something the Democrats have claimed that Republicans neglected for years:

Diggs Brown told people about the progress he saw when he was helping to train a new army, teach English and collect school supplies in Afghanistan.

Gayle Lowe-Kaplan talked about the time her son's Marine unit helped secure an Iraqi town on an election day, when only one villager showed up and an ambush killed one of his friends.

"His convoy was ambushed. He spent three hours alone in the middle of the night with his friend, Sean, whose brains were coming out of his head," she said.

Both testified Wednesday at a state Senate committee hearing on a resolution that criticizes President George W. Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq. The committee backed the resolution with a party line vote of 3 to 2.

More than 170 people packed the Old Supreme Court at the state Capitol for the hearing. The crowd thinned out as the hearing wore on for about four hours.

Minority Republicans had harsh words for the hearing, with Sen. Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs calling it a "political circus routine."

Colorado and 28 other states are either considering or have passed resolutions or written letters to Congress as part of an organized effort by the New York-based Progressive States Network to pressure the president and Congress to change course.

In Colorado, only Democrats, who hold a 20-15 majority in the Senate, came out in favor of the resolution, sponsored by Sens. Ron Tupa of Boulder and Ken Gordon of Denver.

The Democratic-backed non-binding resolution says a great deal about how the left feels about the state's soldiers and military families.

Of course they will claim it is "for the troops".

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