Dick Durbin didn’t blow the whistle when he should have, in the lead up to the war. I lost all respect for the guy when I found out about that. It’d take a major effort on his part to get us out of Iraq for me to regain any respect for him.

The No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate said on Friday he could no longer vote for funding the war in Iraq unless restrictions were attached that would begin winding down American involvement there.

“This Congress can’t give President (George W.) Bush another blank check for Iraq,” said Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who has always opposed the war but until now voted to fund it.

“I can’t support an open-ended appropriation which allows this president to continue this failed policy,” he said in a speech at the left-leaning Center for National Policy.

Durbin, from Illinois, said he and Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin were working on limits that could be attached to the next war funding bill, such as limiting troops to conducting counterterrorism operations and training Iraqi security forces.

More at Yahoo News