Mr. Nelson (FL): Mr. President, I say to my good personal friend and colleague from Florida, if we want to solve this and other problems, we have to have some genuine bipartisanship, and that bipartisanship has to start at the top. There has to be an atmosphere of mutual respect and willingness to work together, and it has to start in the White House.
I have shared these comments publicly and privately. Whenever you face something as contentious as the matters we face--matters of war and peace, the making of Medicare financially solvent, the question of prescription drugs and their cost--you simply can't do it by taking a unilateral position over and over on either side of this aisle; it has to be that people have to come together and work it out. There also has to be a sense of mutual trust, of people telling the truth to each other, of doing what the standards were in the old days where a man's word was his bond. Until we get that, we are going to continue to have difficulty.
We see the problems right now in a war that is certainly a difficult one. We all share the same goal: that the interests of America are furthered if we can stabilize Iraq. How do we get there? There has been so much mistrust and suspicion that has been bred because of all the inconsistencies and lack of information and misinformation and massaged information. But that is then; now is now. What do we do? Thus far, it looks as though the White House and the leadership in Congress can't come together. There is too much distrust.
I have said before and I will say again, thank goodness the Secretary of State is out on a new diplomatic initiative. It is not catty to say it is about time, because there certainly have been those forces within the administration that have wanted this much more in the past, but I think the Secretary of State is making a very valiant effort now, because you are not going to solve the problem in Iraq unless you can get all the neighbors in the region involved to make a political solution stick.
Is a political solution viable? This Senator cannot say at this point that it is a viable prospect because of the sectarian hatred we have seen play out over these last several months. But this hasn't just been going on for months; this has been going on for 1,327 years, ever since the Battle of Karbala. I say to my colleague, who is my friend, and the two of us work together very well all the time, that a lot less rhetoric coming from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue would help this problem, but I don't see it changing right now. I think that is a sad commentary on the state of affairs.
Mr. Martinez: Will the Senator yield for a moment?
Mr. Nelson (FL): Certainly.
Mr. Martinez: I appreciate the Senator's comments, and I so much value our relationship and our ability to work across the aisle, because we seem to get a lot done when we do that. It is an encouraging sign on one of the very difficult issues of our day, which is immigration, that we do seem to be working in a bipartisan way, and it is amazing what can be accomplished when we do work bipartisanly.
I can't help but be shaped by my own life experience, and I remember as I came to America and was learning the ways of this country, and I admired so much this new land of mine, that I would marvel at the phrase: "Politics ends at the water's edge." That used to be the standard. There were these towering giants of another day who occupied these very desks we now use as ours who seemed to find it within themselves to reach a little higher to work across party lines in those postwar years, in the Cold War years when it was so essential.
I think what we need to adopt as a country is the understanding that this struggle against this enemy is long term, that we are going to be in this fight for a long time, probably the time of your service and mine. I hope not, but perhaps. If we are going to be successful in that endeavor, we have to set politics aside. We have to find a way that we can think of America first and whatever label we wear in a secondary way. I am not preaching to my colleague from Florida or anyone in particular. Frankly, the blame lies on both sides of the aisle, with Republicans as well as Democrats. We have to find a way we can move beyond the momentary gain we might make over a 24-hour news cycle for the longer term good of the Nation and the longer term good of what America stands for to the world.
Anyway, maybe the Senator and I began a rare moment here this morning in talking about Iraq where we are not yelling at each other and we are actually talking about how we can bridge our differences and find consensus as something that will help the American people.
Mr. Nelson (FL): Mr. President, I say to my colleague, work in your sphere of influence and this Senator will try to do the same. What we have is an approaching train wreck, because if the Congress passes this emergency funding bill for the war that has this language in it, if that passes this week, then the President is going to veto it next week and that is going to leave us right back where we are, with both sides making a lot of noise and a lot of rhetoric, but that doesn't get us any closer to where we are going. So I say to my colleague, look over the horizon beyond this week and see where we can come together.
I thought the most promising prospect was when Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton came down with the Iraq Study Commission report. They showed, in a bipartisan way among very prominent people of both parties, how you should approach this Iraq situation, and yet, that was last November or December when it came out, and here we are 4 months later and still we have not come together in common ground. So I would encourage my colleague to keep working.
Mr. Martinez: I thank the Senator.
