By Daniel W. Reilly
The Politico

In the NBA, Sen. Jim Webb would have been a can't-miss, No. 1 draft pick.

A decorated Vietnam veteran and a former secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, the freshman Virginia Democrat, who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, was seen early on as the leader of a new vanguard of populist, anti-war Democrats.

Given plum posts on the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees and tapped to give the response to President Bush's State of the Union address just 19 days after he was sworn in, Webb quickly lived up to expectations, emerging this year as a leading Democratic voice in the Iraq war debate.

On July 15th, Senator Jim Webb appeared on NBC's Meet the Press. Jim debated Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the war in Iraq.

If you were unable to watch on Sunday, you can read the transcript and watch the entire segment on the Meet the Press website.

One notable exchange:

SEN. WEBB: No, I don't think that there is a war, to start off with. I think that this has been a botched occupation. It's been going on for four years after the purely military part of it was done. This administration has failed in terms of bringing the right diplomatic formula to the table. We -- all of the things that people like myself were predicting would happen if we went into Iraq are the -- exactly the sorts of things that the president and the small group of people who have sort of rallied around him are saying will happen if we leave. We were saying that Iran would be empowered, we were saying that international terrorism would be empowered, we were saying that the reputation of the United States would be diminished around the world, and we were saying the region would become more unstable. So we've reached the point, and I see, with what Senator Warner and Senator Lugar have introduced, that there's a good, strong feeling among the Republicans as well, we've reached the point where we have to come together as a Congress and attempt to bring some order into this.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you trying to wrest control of the war from the President, in effect, along with the Republicans?

SEN. WEBB: No. I, I think that any administrative discretion, any executive power, has its limits. And the Congress has the authority, not only to appropriate, but to put conditions on, for instance, how our troops are being used. You can go back, for instance, on the -- if you want to look at the amendment that I offered, which Senator Graham and other opposed even though we got 56 votes, the, the provision goes back to something that the Congress did when Harry Truman was president when they were sending troops to Korea who had not been trained and the Congress stepped in and said you can't send anybody overseas until they've been in the military for 120 days. We're trying to do this on the other end. Four years into a war you have to be able to put some rational limits on how our troops are being used. We've got soldiers and Marines right now who are spending more time in Iraq than they are in the states, and the executive branch isn't speaking up. The Congress has the constitutional power to do so, and that's what we're trying to do.

You can also watch highlight clips from the show: "Armed Services Committee on withdrawal date" and "Sen. Webb: 'Botched occupation' in Iraq."