Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has become the first senator to call for a withdrawal timetable from Afghanistan. Feingold made the proposal in a videotaped interview with the Appleton Post-Crescent, a Wisconsin newspaper.

Sen. Russ Feingold: “Most people like to have their own country, and the Afghans are no exception. So the idea of an open-ended commitment with no vision of when it will end is a problem. Again, I’m suggesting a flexible timetable that can be changed, but a vision, a public vision, of what we might intend and when we intend it.”

Feingold is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. He was also the first senator to call for a withdrawal timetable from Iraq.