Congress overwhelmed with anti-war calls from “The Silenced Majority”
Now, Senators Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein are speaking out against a war, joining Sen. Robert Byrd and Tom Daschle who did so earlier this week.
Republican and Democratic Senate offices report “overwhelming†opposition from their constituents to war with Iraq. This comes as Congress prepares to pass a war resolution granting President Bush sweeping powers to invade Iraq.
The national news radio show Democracy Now! conducted an informal survey on Thursday of 70 Republican and Democratic Senate offices.
Of the 26 offices which responded to our inquires, 22 reported an overwhelming majority – in some cases up to 99 percent — of constituents opposed war in Iraq; three said the response was split and just one office reported a majority called backing the war.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), in presenting a comprehensive case against armed intervention, called for the United States to give U.N. inspectors a chance to find and disable Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
“The administration has not made a convincing case that we face such an imminent threat to our national security that a unilateral, preemptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary,”
A Feinstein aide said that the senator has received about 15,000 phone calls and 3,500 letters on the Iraq issue, with the overwhelming majority against a unilateral, preemptive U.S. strike.