Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who along with John Warner and Chuck Hagel are pushing forward the defeatist Levin-Warner resolution, objects in an interview with Eleanor Clift to the candor that has entered into this debate, and in particular to the assertion that such resolutions embolden the enemy  --an observation that general Petraeus and Secretary gates have bothmade.

Senator Collins also expands on why she is pushing this "non-binding" resolution, asserting that she hopes the deployment --underway and under the command of the general who designed it and who was unanimously confirmed last week-- would be canceled by the president.  Right.  Since the president knows exactly what every senator thinks about his plan and is going forward with it, there is zero utility to the non-binding resolution.

I invited Senator Collins on to the program last week and again today, and have done so in the past, and she has never accepted.  The willingness to engage with anti-Adminstration and anti-war zealots like Clift but the refusal to offer explanations to a center-right audience is another of the many reasons why Republicans will find it difficult to support her re-election campaign this year.

I’m curious about what kind of pressure you’re getting, if that’s the right word, from your colleagues—and what kind of pressure you might be exerting on others to try to get them to vote with you.
I’m talking to a number of Republicans to try to persuade them that this is a very reasonable approach. Most of them agree that the president’s surge is not the right strategy for Iraq. But they are worried about how a vote for the Warner-Collins-Nelson resolution is going to be interpreted. I don’t know that the White House is calling them, but I suspect they are. They’ve given up on me. I have not had any calls from the White House. I announced my position back in December and told the president my views after I returned from Iraq (in December). So it’s not surprising that they’ve given up on me.

The argument that the Republican leaders are making is that this is a slap at our troops. And I really reject that argument. I’m doing this because I don’t want to send more troops into an impossible situation where they’re in the midst of a sectarian battle. And I do find some of the debate to be offensive. The attacks on John Warner, which were even done at a press conference by [Republican] Sen. [David] Vitter [of Louisiana] and [Republican] Sen. [Jim] DeMint [of South Carolina], I just find reprehensible. Here’s an individual who has spent his entire life associated with the military—as a World War II veteran, a secretary of the Navy and chairman on the Armed Services Committee … the idea that he is somehow being disloyal to our troops is just preposterous. I feel like I have to be the one to go out there and really defend him because he’s so senatorial, he doesn’t say these things.

Have you confronted any of Senator Warner’s critics?
I actually do plan to do that. I did talk to [Texas Republican Sen. John] Cornyn about it, who participated in that press conference—because he said what we were doing would embolden the enemy, and I did take issue with him on that. And I told The New York Times that I thought the comments were outrageous. But Vitter is not here today at the retreat, and he seems to be the harshest in his comments. It really does offend me. It is not in keeping with the traditions of the Senate, or at least the traditions as we would like them to be.

This line of attack has been used, but generally across party lines. What’s different here is it’s within your party.
That’s right.

What do you hope the practical resolution of this resolution will be?
If it passes with a significant majority vote, it’s my hope—and I realize it’s a faint hope—that the president would take it to heart and not go forth with this plan, and instead accept our urgings that he reconsider it, that he look at all the alternatives, and that he work with us to try to come up with a bipartisan plan. I, for one, think that we do need more troops in Anbar province because the fight there is not sectarian—it’s against Al Qaeda. It’s totally different. So what I would do is reallocate troops out of Baghdad. Everyone says, “What’s your plan?”—well, I do have a plan. I don’t know whether it’s the right plan or not, but I do have a plan. I told the president my views after I came back from my trip. I also met with the deputy national-security adviser and talked with him at length about my observations. And I have this hope that if we get a pretty strong vote with some significant Republican support, if we can get 60 or close to it, I hope the president would reconsider. I realize that’s a long shot, but it is my hope that it would cause them to pause and think about this.