Appearing on Fox News' Dayside with Linda Vester following coverage of President Bush's August 22 speech at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, National Review editor Rich Lowry falsely claimed that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said that the United States should “get out [of Iraq] now.” In fact, Feingold has proposed a goal of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq by December 31, 2006, but did not propose a date by which the United States should start withdrawing troops.

As Feingold noted on the August 21 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, his proposed withdrawal date is a “target” not a “deadline.” In other words, the timeline could be pushed back if circumstances require it:

FEINGOLD: [T]here could be flexibility. There could be ... Look, what we're doing with the constitution right now, it wasn't achieved by a particular date, so you add a little more time. Look, let's say they have to train up a few more troops. Let's say that the administration is open and tells us exactly what's going on and says, “Look, we think we need to stay there two more months”; so be it. But without any sort of a time frame in place, we'll never even get to that point.

Perhaps Lowry was confusing Feingold with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who said on August 18 that "[t]he longer we stay in Iraq, the more similarities will start to develop" between Iraq and the Vietnam War.

From the August 22 edition of Fox News' Dayside:

LOWRY: Politically, though, what's most interesting is not, you know, what Bush is going to do, because we know he's going to stay the course, and that's what he wants to do. It's what happens to the Democrats. I think they really risk a split on this. Do they go [Sen.] Hillary's [Rodham Clinton (D-NY)] route and say “stay the course,” or do they go with Russ Feingold and these left-wing groups around Cindy Sheehan [war critic and mother of a soldier who died in Iraq] who say “get out now”?