Quote du Jour: Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY)

All 435 reps will get a chance to talk for 5 minutes on the Iraq resolution, but here's one snippet:

The president has had generals tell him that this war should end and an escalation is not the answer. But when he gets advice he doesn't like, he simply fires the generals.

He has had a commission of experts advise him that a diplomatic political effort with all of Iraq's neighbors would be the most effective way to enable the U.S. to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly. However, the president does not like that advice, so he has chosen to simply ignore it.

When the president needed Congress to approve military action against Iraq, he cared about the perspective of the Congress then.

As Congress begins to conduct oversight of the combat operation, the president wants to ignore the voices of dissent that come from this very body.

The cameras of history are rolling. And I hope and pray that, at the end of this debate, history can record that this body, starting with this resolution as a first step, has taken the appropriate action to end a morally wrong war that threatens to irreversibly stain the fabric of Congress if we do not exercise our constitutional authority and our patriotic responsibility to balance the president's power.