Betrayal

Dana Milbank has a good piece in the Post today covering John Warner’s monumental flip-flop on Jim Webb’s deployment bill.

Just two months ago, the courtly Virginia Republican went to the Senate floor and sided with his Democratic colleague from the commonwealth, Jim Webb, on a plan that would shorten troop deployments in Iraq. Yesterday, he went to the same place to announce that he would now vote against the same bill.

[Snip]

Webb was rather less pleased to discover that Warner had retreated from their shared foxhole. The White House "turned up the political heat, and that made people, like particularly Senator Warner, uncomfortable," he deduced.

And when did Webb learn of the betrayal? "Um," Webb replied, "he told me five minutes before the debate began this morning."

What a truly spineless maneuver by a Senator for whom I had a fair amount of respect. But let’s face it, anytime one sides, on defense issues no less, with the likes of chickenhawk sonuvabitch Saxby Chambliss over decorated vet Jim Webb, chances are pretty good that one is doing the soldiers a profound disservice. Not to mention selling out ones negotiating partner at the last minute or as Milbank put it, “fragging his home-state colleague”. Ugh.