The U.S. is losing its wars in the Middle East, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told a local West Virginia newspaper on Tuesday.

"Today, I have grave misgivings about being in Iraq for another week," Rockefeller told the Charleston Daily Mail's editorial board. "We should be out of Iraq this year altogether. We are not going to win. It is not in the cards. Many Asian countries have a totally tribal culture.

"It is the same thing in Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen," Rockefeller added.

Rockefeller said that his vote to allow then-President George W. Bush to take military action against Iraq in 2003 was one of the worst votes of his life.

"When I voted for the Iraq war, it was one of the worst votes in my life," Rockefeller said.

But Rockefeller also suggested that his decision to vote to allow Bush to go into Iraq was based on inaccurate information proved by U.S. intelligence services and that Congress ought to do more to hold those organizations responsible for their mistakes.

"As a member of our [Senate] Intelligence Committee, we can investigate the skullduggery and the manipulation of information that is classified," said Rockefeller.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) predicted that the clash in Congress over raising the borrowing limit will be "raucous."

The coming fight over raising the debt ceiling marks the “beginning of eight to 10 years of America reconsidering itself," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

Democrats, some Republicans and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner fear that if Congress does not raise the $14.3 trillion limit, the U.S. could default on its financial obligations to debtors, including China, which could prompt a global crisis.

Rockefeller told the Charleston [W.Va.] Daily Mail's editorial board on Tuesday that the decision this week by Standard & Poor's to lower the outlook on the U.S. debt from "stable" to "negative" was "scary," and said he would vote to raise the debt ceiling.

The United States should construct about 100 more domestic nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, according to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

In an interview with Tennessee’s The Daily Times, Alexander hailed nuclear power as a safe and clean energy source, despite the meltdown last month at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant that was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.

“Since the 1950s, there’s never been a fatality in connection with the Navy reactors,” Alexander said Tuesday in a reference to about 100 naval vessels run on nuclear power. He also said there had been no fatalities traced to radiation at any of the nation’s 100 power plants on the ground.

The nation's soaring debt is the "issue of your time," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told students Monday at the Christopher Newport University.



Warner is a member of a the bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Six, who are working to strike an agreement that would eliminate $4 trillion from the U.S. deficit by 2020.



According to The Daily Press, Warner told students at the small liberal arts university in Hampton Roads, Va., that compromise is not a sign of weakness. No matter what the final product, Warner said, he believed his role in the controversial negotiations would "make some folks mad."



On Sunday, Warner indicated the Gang of Six was nearing a deal and said they had put everyone on the table for possible cuts.



"What we're doing is we're saying everything has to be on the table," said Warner on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Entitlement reform, dramatic spending cuts, looking at tax reform.

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The other members of the bipartisan Senate work group are Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) accused Democrats of employing "scare tactics" to try to stop reforms to Medicare and Medicaid proposed in Republicans’ 2012 budget.

Guinta told the New Hampshire Union Leader he had heard "all the criticisms" of the House GOP’s plan and dismissed them as part of a Democratic strategy to sink it.

"I think they are nothing more than Democratic talking points and scare tactics," said Guinta, who is a freshman member.

In his radio address Saturday, President Obama suggested that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) plan would "end Medicare as we know it and make cuts to Medicaid that would leave millions … without the care they need."

Instead of engaging in "scare tactics," Guinta said, Democrats should engage in an "honest discussion" and devise a plan to bring down the debt and deficit.

"My sense is that this country wants to have an honest discussion about the drivers of our debt and deficit and wants us to propose ideas and solutions to preserve and protect these entitlements," he said.

Guinta was among the 235 Republicans who voted for the Ryan budget plan on Friday that would cut $5.8 trillion in federal spending over 10 years and balance the budget by 2040 without raising taxes.

The GOP budget is not expected to advance in the Democratic-led Senate.

The debt crisis could “ruin America,” and the nation should be “sickened” by Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade its outlook on U.S. debt to negative, according to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

“How many more warning signs will it take for Washington to realize we are facing a debt crisis that will ruin America?” Rubio said Monday in a statement.

Real estate tycoon Donald Trump's possible presidential bid ought to be taken seriously, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said.

"I would not push him aside," Inouye said Monday. 

The nine-term senator sat down with the Civil Beat editorial board for a wide-ranging interview.

He had harsh terms for the "birther" movement, which questions President Obama's citizenship. Trump has also questioned Obama's birth place.

"What kind of nonsense is that?" Inouye said. "I can imagine someone who doesn’t know anything or hardly reads the papers coming out with statements like that, but not a billionaire. And there are a lot of them like that."

He also noted the 2012 election is "not going to be easy for Democrats." The party is attempting to win back control of the House and keep the majority in the Senate next year.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes.

In a letter addressed Monday to the FDA, Blumenthal said the agency should ban menthol cigarettes because they encourage young people to smoke.