Over the summer months Democrats tried multiple times to enact timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. They failed, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declaring on the floor of the Senate that they had been defeated. They backed off even when the early days of the surge marked an increase in violence, their opportune moment to fracture the GOP.
Yet after the successful gains following the surge, the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the drop in violence, the slow maneuverings of the Maliki government to take up reconciliation, the abandonment of western Iraq by al-Qaeda, and senior al-Qaeda membership reaching room temperature, one might think the Democrats would reconsider their plan to declare defeat. But, we'd be wrong if we thought that:
The Democratic-led House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat Wednesday and inserted timelines for an immediate troop withdrawal in a 50 billion dollar Iraq war funding bill.
The House voted 218 to 203 to pass the emergency war budget, calling for a pullback of most combat troops to start within 30 days, with a goal of completion by December 15, 2008.
President George W. Bush, who has thwarted every previous Democratic attempt to change his war policy, has repeatedly warned he will never accept mandated troop withdrawal timelines.
The vote, the latest drama in a prolonged showdown between Bush and Democrats over the war, was largely symbolic, however, as the bill is considered dead on arrival in the Senate.
And so we're back where we were earlier this spring. If the bill makes it through the Senate, the White House will veto it and Congress won't be able to override it. Their hard line on Iraq this summer alienated Congressional Republicans, some of whom supported a change in the administration's war policy. After pulling their all-nighter stunt and yanking the defense appropriation off the floor, the Democrats followed with a character attack on General Petraeus, led by Hillary Clinton who claimed she needed a "willful suspension of disbelief" to trust the general the Senate had overwhelmingly voted to confirm. Let the Democrats try to set timetables, but nothing will alter the war policy unless they have the courage to completely defund the war effort. Looks like Lieberman was right.
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