President's Delayed Speech Spurs Democrats Into Action

Dec. 13, 2006 — -- While President Bush continued consultations with military officials on the way forward in Iraq, Democrats, stirred by the delay in Bush's planned Iraq address and emboldened by the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, took Middle East diplomacy into their own hands.

One such Democrat, Armed Services Committee member Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., ignored State Department objections and visited Syria this week to talk with leaders there about shared interests with the United States in Iraq.

Foreign Relations Committee members (and potential Democratic presidential candidates) Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Chris Dodd of Connecticut are hot on Nelson's heels, travelling to Damascus in the coming days.

Among the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations last week was a call for more direct diplomacy with Syria and Iran, something the Bush administration has declined to do.

"Our view is that the Syrian government knows full well what it needs to do," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said today. "And certainly the United States is not going to pay the price for mere engagement with Syria in trading on the freedom of the people of Lebanon or looking the other way on the U.N. tribunal investigating the murder of former Prime Minister Hariri.

"Because merely to ask the Syrian government not to do those things which civilized states wouldn't do in the first place...supporting the cause of the use of terror and violence to stop the forward progress of a reconciliation between the Palestinian people and the Israeli people," he said.

In Damascus, Nelson told reporters in a conference call that his trip was a "fact finding mission," that he and Syrian President Bashar Assad "have a common interest in stabilizing Iraq," and called the meeting a "crack in the door."

Nelson has been to Syria two other times, but this was his first trip since 2004.

Back in Washington, other Democrats urged Bush to firmly tell Iraqi politicians now, ahead of Saturday's meeting of politicians in Iraq, that the United States will not be there forever.