Reply #2: Wow, thank you for pulling these together

[karynnj]

All of these proposals are in reality, very complicated. Each seems to oversold by its proponents. I definately agree with you that it will be very difficult to find 16 Republicans to sign on any time soon - and we likely need 17, because they may be easier to get than Leiberman.

I think that Biden, Hagel and Levin already tried to get a blll that would in one setp de-authorize and re-authorize in a more constrained fashion the war. Earlier in committee, Kerry spoke in mid January of doing that where the reauthorization would match the Kerry/Feingold prescibed actions. The Biden/Hagel/Levin plan gave Bush more latitude than that and it failed to get cloture.

I think that many Senators would have problems if Hillary literally means de-authorize it, then in a second bill authorize it. They wouldn't trust us to pass the second part, for good reason. :) If I understand it this bill de-authorizes the war in October. I still don't understand exactly what they are proposing.

I suspect that this is a bill directed at Edwards - so she can point out she voted for the Byrd amendment and he didn't. It should be noted that Biden and Dodd also voted for the Byrd amendment.

Dodd (and Kerry and Harkin) also voted for the Durbin amendment that would have explicity limited the reason to imminent thread from WMD instead of the vaguer IWR definition.

None of these provisions would likely have stopped Bush - look at the signing statement on the IWR.