So went a rare Senate all-nighter from Tuesday dusk to Wednesday dawn with senators keeping the C-SPAN cameras on to debate withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The so-called "pajama party" switched back and forth between those for or against redeploying troops for a straight 24 hours but by early Wednesday not enough senators wanted to proceed with a final vote.
At 11 a.m., groggy senators cast 52 votes to move an amendment forward to withdraw troops - eight votes short of the 60 they needed to cut off debate. Bennett and Hatch both voted against stopping debate.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid later issued a statement saying Republicans are "defying the will" of a bipartisan majority of Congress and the "vast majority" of Americans in order to protect the president.
"Democrats will not stop until Republicans drop their obstruction and allow an up-or-down vote on the most important issues facing the country," Reid said.
Reid cast the sole Democratic vote to block the legislation, allowing him to resurrect it later. And he said he would suspend work on a broad defense bill.
Those moves are intended to ensure the Iraq debate will remain focused on legislation ordering troop withdrawals and not slip to softer proposals backed by several Republicans. Democrats are hoping that, by September, when Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus delivers his assessment on the recent troop "surge," enough GOP members will turn against the war to bring the troops home.
Just four Republicans early Wednesday voted with Democrats to end debate and move to a vote.
"The majority is waving the flag of withdrawal," Hatch said on the floor around 6 a.m.
Without a sound policy accompanying a withdrawal, he added, "Our enemies will be emboldened, our competitors encouraged, and our friends throughout the region will be, like me, discouraged."
Bennett was scheduled to speak between midnight and 1 a.m. but got bumped. He drove home around 3 a.m. and returned for the mid-morning vote.
On Tuesday, Bennett recorded an audio clip for Utah radio stations in which he said Democrats and Republicans had reached a deal on how to proceed with the amendment to withdraw troops and now Democrats wanted to change the rules and "embarrass the Republicans."
"Tonight's operation is primarily a public relations ploy," Bennett said.
Bennett is supporting a bill that would implement the rest of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, but he says he is not breaking with President Bush on Iraq. Bennett called his sponsorship a "nudge" to the president.
Hatch, who later Wednesday was catching occasional cat-naps in his office, said during his Senate speech that "these are perilous times" and the country is divided. He added, as he has before, that the Bush administration has made "spectacular mistakes," in prosecuting the war.
Still, Hatch said, "while I agree with many of the criticisms of this administration's early failures in the Iraq war, I will not stand quietly against the irony Ð indeed, the hypocrisy Ð of suggestions that it is OK to abandon a war without considering the consequences."
tburr@sltrib.com
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* The Associated Press contributed to this report.
