Video: Hagel on Wednesday's Iraq Resolution

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) is a man on a mission and that mission is very simple: demanding long overdue oversight of the Bush administration's lack of policies on the war in Iraq and an honest dialogue about the realities on the ground.

One Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee debated and passed a non-binding resolution to show its disapproval of Bush's so-called surge.

Hagel was among the most forceful supporters of the measure.

I don't know how many United States senators believe we have a coherent strategy in Iraq. I don't think we've ever had a coherent strategy. In fact, I would even challenge the administration today to show us the plan that the president talked about the other night. There is no plan.

I happen to know Pentagon planners were on their way to Central Com over the weekend. They haven't even team B-ed this plan. And my dear friend Dick Lugar talks about coherence of strategy.

There is no strategy. This is a pingpong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans; they're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder. We better be as sure as we can be.

[...]

If we don't debate this...if we don't debate this... we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country.

And not only that, you fail the Iraqi people. That is the essence of all this, Senator Hagel. Thank you for stating it so clearly.


CSPAN will have the video of the entire debate when it becomes available sometime today.

Update: The video of the hearing has been posted. Hagel's full statement begans at ~43:05.