No cheating. No looking ahead.
Once you read the quotes, come back and click, "Here's Your Conflict." Once you watch that, then come back and click the links for the background.
...favored cutbacks in the size of the military, including U.S. troops in Europe.
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Although ____ and his aides defended the continued involvement of U.S. forces in the ____ mission, they ruefully acknowledged that during ____ they had allowed the operation to drift ...
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“how are we going to establish a funding mechanism so that the American taxpayer is not stuck with the bill or not stuck with the whole bill?”
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... leading Republicans argued that ... goals in ____ were unattainable in the near future ...
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But the ... response was marred by civilian deaths.
... the episode as proof that outside military intervention could not significantly improve the country's chaotic situation. “I don't see an end to it,” said ____. “What will the condition of the country be when we leave ...?”
...Now we are killing women and children because they are combatants,” said Sen. ____, R-____.
But many senators from both sides of the aisle seemed ambivalent. “No one wants to leave that country in shambles. No one wants to set up a situation where they go right back into the same kind of despair they had before,” said Armed Services Chairman ____. “But neither do we want to set up a situation where the United States has committed its military to a mission that is very broad and basically has no end point and really no definition.”
Virtually all members agreed on two points: that congressional debate on the issue was long overdue and that the president needed to better explain what the United States hoped to achieve by staying in ____.
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Clearly defined goals are essential to any mission, argued ____, R-____.: “When our interests are clear, thousands of casualties may not be too high a price to pay, but when our goals are uncertain, one death is too many.” ...
Defending the deployment, ___ said, “If it was important enough to go into ____ — and I think all of us agree that it was — then it is important enough to make a reasonable effort to see to it that when we leave ____ it does not immediately relapse into the same chaos and the same anarchy that created the starvation.”
Other members argued that pulling American troops out of ____ would undermine U.S. credibility.
____, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said, “If we pull out prematurely, chased out by ____, I believe that U.S. leadership, prestige, credibility and national self-respect will be significantly harmed.”
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Promising to apply painful lessons learned in ____ to other potential peacekeeping interventions, ____ told reporters, “I think that, everyone involved in ____ is perhaps more sensitive than was the case in the beginning of the ____ operation about the dangers of it, and the need to have a strict sense of limitations and conditions before the involvement occurs.”
The deadly ____ battle in ____ between U.S. troops and ____ caused outrage in Congress and pushed ____ to make good on his newfound conviction that ____ efforts needed an end-date as well as clearly defined goals. On ____, ____ announced that the United States would increase the U.S. forces in ____ to provide a more muscular presence, but he also pledged that “all American troops will be out of ____ no later than ____, except for a few hundred support personnel in non-combat roles.”
This became a legislative as well as a military line of defense, as Democratic leaders in Congress defeated counterproposals and won approval of legislation setting a ____ cutoff for most U.S. funding of the ____ operation.
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____ and Secretary of State ____ were dispatched to Capitol Hill on ____ to provide a closed-door briefing with the underlying objective of buying the administration more time to develop a new approach.
Members described it as “an unmitigated disaster.” The basement briefing room at the Capitol was packed with more than 200 members demanding answers, but ____ and ____+ appeared more interested in soliciting the views of the assembled lawmakers. Liberals and conservatives were unsparing in their criticism. Rep. ____, D-____, described the session as the ____ team's version of the “Five O'Clock Follies” — the rosy news briefings by U.S. military officials during the dark days of the Vietnam War.
With the policy in danger of unraveling, congressional leaders from both parties sought to cool the overheated atmosphere.
Senate leaders provided breathing space for the administration by delaying consideration of the defense appropriations bill. ____... weighed in to help the president at a critical moment by calming the frenzy for immediate withdrawal. “We expect our troops in ____ to remain calm and collected under fire,” he told the Senate on ____, “and we owe them nothing less than equal composure back here in Washington as we decide what to do next in ____.”
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Facing calls from Capitol Hill for an immediate with drawal from ____, ____ pledged in a nationally televised address ____ that most U.S. forces would be pulled out by ____. “Our mission from this day forward,” ____ said, “is to increase our strength, do our job, bring our soldiers out and bring them home.”
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Nonetheless, some key senators, including Democrat ____ of ____ and Republican ____ of ____, rejected _____ retooled policy. “President ____ has provided a deadline for withdrawal without providing a clear reason for staying in ____,” ____ said after the Oval Office speech. “If our goal is to pressure and defeat the ____, the new approach does not provide enough troops. If our goal is establishment of a government and political stability, the new approach does not provide enough time.”
Yet the opposition to ____ policy, while broad and bipartisan, was also divided. There was no consensus as to whether the United States should pull out instantly or within months.
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Before voting on the ____ amendment, the Senate voted by a seemingly solid margin of 61–38 to table (kill) an amendment by ____ that would have repudiated ____ ____ plan and instead required a “prompt” withdrawal of U.S. forces. “The mission which the American people supported … has been accomplished,” ____ said in arguing for his amendment. “We didn't say we would ____ those people forever.” (Vote 313, p. 41-S)
____ said he was “gratified by the margin” of a victory that crossed lines of party and ideology. But the results belied the unresolved tensions over U.S. participation in ____ interventions. The debate reflected unease — bordering on contempt — toward the administration's performance in ____.
Even among senators who backed the successful amendment, there was derisive criticism of the ____ team's handling of ____. “This is not a policy. It is gibberish,” ____, R-____, said of a 33-page report summarizing U.S. aims and plans that the administration submitted to Congress on ____. But Danforth said he backed the amendment “because our troops are in place, and [____] is our commander in chief, and we're headed out [of ____].”
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“Let's face it,” ____ said, “the U.S. mission in ____ has changed from saving lives to saving face… . I am prepared to state with total conviction that it is not worth one American life to help the authors of a failed policy save face.”
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