I Wish Feingold was Running- new Update

Senator Russ Feingold had a conference call with some bloggers after this evening's vote. The blog Down with Tyranny was represented and he shared Feingold's opening statement:

Thanks everybody for participating. You know I went out again this weekend, in the very cold Wisconsin weather, just as I did in the previous two weekends, and I went to some of the most rural, Republican towns in the state and held town meetings. And you know this attitude about what should be done in Iraq is a consensus…everywhere but in Washington. People do not want us to just slow walk this, they don’t want us to just worry about the escalation, they want us to get out of Iraq...
...And then there’s also a provision that attempts to throw roadblocks at any attempt by Congress to use the power of the purse, which is an entirely constitutional and appropriate step for us to consider at this point. So those who want to support Warner, it's understandable because they want to make some points vis-à-vis Bush. There’s the temptation of defeating Bush on something he has put out there. I understand that. But it's incredibly short sighted, it’s going for some kind of political point instead of getting at the heart of this matter. Who was thinking about whether or not to escalate in Iraq on November 7th? That wasn’t the issue. The issue that determined that election was whether we should be in Iraq at all. The answer was no....
...I am really troubled by the attempt of not only Republicans but leading Democrats to essentially finesse the situation we’re in right now. This is not a time to finesse the situation, this not a time to slow-walk. This almost reminds me a little bit of the way Democrats behaved in October of 2002 which was trying to play it safe, trying to use words such as, "well, we’re going to vote for this resolution but what it really means is that the president should go to the U.N." That stuff doesn’t fly. And this kind of an attempt to go a little bit of the way just to show you’re on the other side of the President doesn’t fly either.

What we need now is a strong position to get out of this situation.

Raw Story, reporting on the same conference call, shares that when Feingold was asked what people can do to help stop the war he said that people need to call their Congressmen and tell them that we want OUT. That any Iraq resolution has to have a time line to withdrawal troops and that they need to withdraw funding after that.

UPDATE: Watch Feingold over at Crooks and Liars.