Listening to people who know what they're talking about...

...is always a good idea. Joe Sestak defended his recent vote for the Emergency Supplemental Bill as follows:

Last week, Congress voted on an emergency supplemental bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not what I wanted– it did not contain a date certain for redeployment that I had previously voted for and President Bush had vetoed. But it provided the resources our troops needed to be safe until September. I could not deprive the men and women of our armed forces those funds required for their security until they redeploy.

I saw combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first was a just war; the second, a tragic misadventure. And since the day I announced for Congress, I have never deviated from what I said that day: a date certain to redeploy from Iraq within a year is the only viable strategy that will change the incentives for the political leaders of Iraq– along with Iran's and Syria's– to change their behavior and work for stability and an unfailed Iraqi state.

But I've run the Navy's $67 billion annual warfare program, and I know that annual defense money is only so fungible between defense funding accounts, and the account called "operations" will run out in July. The practical result is an America unable to then provide its servicemen and women what they need to defend themselves in Iraq or Afghanistan. I also know that redeploying out of an area of conflict is the most challenging of military operations, and to do it safely for our 140,000 military personnel– and the thousands of US civilians in Iraq– will take at least six months....