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Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

I don't believe in deadlines, I don't believe in telling the enemy when we're going to withdraw.

You cannot tell the enemy you're going to leave and expect the enemy to not - and expect to succeed. I mean, that's just a fundamental of warfare.

A key flaw of the Obama administration's approach to Afghanistan has been constantly announcing proposed withdrawal dates for U.S. forces, which has enabled the Taliban to believe they can simply wait out the clock.

I believe there should be no arbitrary date set for withdrawal and yet no permanent, unending deployment. No cut and run, yet measured progress in helping a people who want to be free without an illusion of overnight success.

At a time when the insurgents are saying that time is working against them, my Democratic colleagues are introducing a measure to set a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq that will undercut the momentum that the insurgents themselves say we have built in Iraq.

We must have a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces - or at the very least a plan for it - something the administration has incredulously failed to do for over two years.

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

But I would make it unambiguously clear that we are going to withdraw, and if Iraq falls into civil war and if all these unhappy things occur, we're just going to have to accept them.