And now it is cast in political concrete: President George Bush will get an Iraq funding bill with a withdrawal timetable in it and he will veto it in a historical showdown between the two branches of government. The Senate has just put the final ribbon on the gift Congress is about to present to GWB:
A defiant Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq by Oct. 1, propelling Congress toward a historic veto showdown with President Bush on the war.
The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president’s threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.
One interesting aspect is both sides these kinds of largely party-line votes are going to underscore the fact that elections matter. The GOP is likely to rev up its fund-raising capabilities to use these votes to try to regain majority party status. The Democrats will point to this as an example of Democratic-controlled success. But the wild card still remains independent voters — who so far continue to be breaking for the Democrats. MORE:
“The president has failed in his mission to bring peace and stability to the people of Iraq,� said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He later added: “It’s time to bring our troops home from Iraq.�
The $124.2 billion bill requires troop withdrawals to begin Oct. 1, or sooner if the Iraqi government does not meet certain benchmarks. The House passed the measure Wednesday by a 218-208 vote.
Across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told reporters the war effort likely will “get harder before it gets easier.”
That statement doesn’t portend well for the final two years of the Bush administration, the Republican Party and for those who want to see more government by consensus and coalitions.
Because it means casualties could increase, the barrage of troubling news from Iraq could continue…all plopped down in the middle of an early-Presidential election primary period where Presidential wannabes of both parties are above all scrambling to appeal to their parties’ respective bases.
Bush will most certainly veto the bill. But no matter what political ballet comes next, it’s unlikely the troops will go without funding — and likely that the political temperatures are about to sharply increase.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.