Webb-Warner faceoff leaves no winners

The Virginian-Pilot

The Senate - where the grown-ups once worked - spent the past week fighting a genteel version of the pointless war that has already doomed so many Americans in Iraq.

In the end, as usual, not a thing changed. Not the president's "strategery," such as it is. Not the debate over the war. Not the estimation the public has of Congress.

The only thing that changed was that some presidential candidates scored political points. Oh, and the Senate condemned a rich liberal activist group for taking out a newspaper ad.

Congratulations, Congressmen. It's cocktail hour.

For Virginians, the week's most extraordinary moment came Wednesday, when Sen. John Warner took to the floor of the Senate. His junior colleague, Sen. Jim Webb, had introduced legislation requiring the Pentagon to ensure soldiers spend as much time at home as they do on the battlefield.

For his trouble, he was pilloried by the likes of Sen. John McCain, a presidential hopeful desperately trying to make himself relevant.

Then there was Warner, a lion of the Senate, an authority on the nation's defense. He had voted for Webb's first attempt to pass such a measure. But then came a Pentagon parade, and pressure from a White House desperate to stay its disastrous course.

Warner described his deliberations this way: "It is their professional judgment that if this amendment were to be adopted and become law - and I will put aside all the other issues of a possible veto, and I just don't want to see another veto scenario here right in the middle of the war, and that is another reason - but they are absolutely convinced, and have now convinced me, that they cannot effectively put into force that amendment at this time, without causing severe problems within the existing forces and those who are serving there."

So Warner is convinced that the Pentagon and the administration aren't competent enough to figure out how to rotate troops. Yet Warner seems to still have confidence that these same people are capable of running a war.

The courtly Warner may have been smiling as he slid the knife in, but Webb's proposal to ease the military's burden was dealt a mortal blow.

Throughout the Iraq affair, there have been precious few opportunities to demand accountability from the White House, to insist that the Pentagon do right by the men and women sent to die in the Middle East.

This week represented one of those opportunities. Webb simply asked the Pentagon and the White House to live up to their own promises. Warner and a few dozen Republicans refused.

The career of Virginia's senior senator ends soon.

For a man who has done such good for the military, particularly for the rank and file, it was a crushing moment. On one of his last major votes on the war in Iraq, Warner chose to give deference to a president who hasn't earned it. His supporters - including the ones on this page - can only wonder how such episodes might occlude an otherwise worthy legacy.