WASHINGTON (Tuesday, Dec. 18) - Following are highlights of remarks Tuesday night on the Senate Floor by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), as the Senate neared the end of a debate on an omnibus appropriations bill for several government agencies and including $40 billion more for the war in Iraq.  Leahy, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, managed the debate on the bill for most of the day.  In a vote of 71 to 24, the Senate Tuesday night defeated the Feingold-Reid-Leahy Amendment, cosponsored also by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by next May.  Leahy said again that he will vote against the appropriations bill if it does not include a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq --

 

(Remarks on the Senate Floor at about 7 p.m.)

 

MR. LEAHY:  Mr. President, I came here at the time of the Vietnam War.  I remember how people said, “Well, maybe we should do something.  The Vietnam War has gone on too long.” 

 

Well, we finally stopped it.  I’m the only Vermonter ever to vote against the war in Vietnam.  I voted against the funding for it, and the funding failed in the United States Senate in April 1975, by one vote.  And the war ended.  Two years later it was hard to find anybody who supported the war, even though they had been paying for it for a long time.

 

We’ve been in Iraq longer than we were in World War II.  It’s time to bring our brave men and women home and let them be with their families. 

 

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