Reuters
May 22, 2007
By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush won a battle
over nearly $100 billion to fund the Iraq war as congressional
Democrats on Tuesday abandoned troop withdrawal efforts for
now but pledged to try again in July.
Instead of setting schedules for withdrawing U.S. troops,
it appeared the Democratic-run Congress and the Republican
White House agreed for the first time to include conditions
prodding Baghdad to make better progress toward quelling violence
or risk losing some U.S. reconstruction aid.
"We've been led to believe that that is the language
that is likely to be in the final version," Senate Republican
leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters.
That provision passed the Senate last week, with a few Democrats
supporting it. At the time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
of Nevada said of the language crafted by Virginia Republican
Sen. John Warner: "If you look in the dictionary under
'weak' the Warner amendment would be listed under it."
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the measure would provide "the
funding and flexibility the forces need. That's what we've
wanted all along."
On May 1, Bush vetoed Congress' first version of this year's
emergency war funds bill because it set an October 1 deadline
for starting to pull most of the 147,000 soldiers out of Iraq,
a goal of anti-war Democrats.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said
lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on a new bill,
and acknowledged the political realities.
"The president has made it very clear he's not going
to sign timelines (for withdrawing troops). We can't pass timelines
over his veto," he told reporters.
DISAPPOINTMENT FOR SOME DEMOCRATS
That will be a disappointment for some Democrats who say they
won control of Congress last November largely because voters
wanted to see an end to the 4-year-old war in Iraq. But it
was welcome news for Republican leaders who have argued Congress
should not be "micro-managing" the war.
"Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort
to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding bill for
the troops," said House Minority Leader John Boehner of
Ohio.
Some Democrats have predicted for months that it would take
longer to force troop withdrawals. They argue that even with
a weaker bill, they have ended four years of "rubber stamp" war
funding bills of the previous Republican-run Congress.
Hoyer and Reid said Democrats would continue pushing for a "change
in direction" in Iraq, where at least 3,420 U.S. soldiers
have been killed and more than 34,000 wounded.
"Certainly we'll do it in July when Mr. Murtha's bill
is on the floor," Hoyer said.
In the meantime, Democrats are fully funding Bush's war financing
request.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha has led efforts in
the House of Representatives to end U.S. combat in the Iraq
war. In July, Murtha will shepherd a military funding bill
through the House for the next fiscal year, starting October
1.
Bush and most Republicans have argued that setting dates for
withdrawing U.S. troops would rob military commanders of the
flexibility they need to conduct the war.
Despite those charges, even some congressional Republicans,
Boehner among them, have spoken of autumn as the timeframe
for reassessing progress in Iraq and possibly producing "Plan
B."
Under the Democrats' latest strategy, the war funding bill
will pay for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.
Aides said there would be benchmarks for measuring Iraq's progress
toward stability and setting up a competent army.
There would also be consequences for Iraq not meeting the
benchmarks, the aides said -- likely to be limits on about
$1.6 billion in reconstruction aid, as in Warner's proposal.
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