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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Democrats to fund Iraq war with no pullout date Democrats to fund Iraq war with no pullout date Tue May 22, 2007 2:21PM EDT By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush won a battle over funding the Iraq war as congressional Democrats on Tuesday abandoned troop withdrawal efforts for now but pledged to fight with new legislation in July. Senior congressional aides said a $100 billion war funding bill the U.S. Congress is trying to finish this week will not contain timetables for withdrawing most of the 147,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, as anti-war Democrats had hoped. 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 out soldiers. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said that finishing touches on a new bill were still being worked on with the White House. But acknowledging the political realities of the Democrats' narrow control of Congress and a White House occupied by a Republican, Hoyer told reporters, "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." That will be a disappointment for many Democrats who think they won control of Congress in last November's elections largely because voters wanted to see an end to the four-year-old war in Iraq. Hoyer said Democrats will 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. He was referring to Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has led efforts in the House of Representatives to end U.S. combat involvement in the Iraq war. In July, Murtha will shepherd a military funding bill through the House for the next fiscal year, which begins on October 1. 'SURRENDER DATES' Bush and most Republicans have argued that setting goal dates for withdrawing U.S. troops would rob military commanders of the flexibility they need to conduct the war. Such timetables, according to many Republicans, amount to nothing more than "surrender dates." Despite those charges, even some congressional Republicans are beginning to talk about September or October as the timeframe for reassessing U.S. progress in the war and possibly coming up with a "Plan B." Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said the current U.S. troop escalation to help secure Iraq could be Baghdad's "last chance to get it right." But he has refused to elaborate. Barring significant changes to the Democrats' latest strategy, the war funding bill will pay for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan through September. Aides said they plan to include "benchmarks" for measuring Iraq's progress in creating political stability and establishing a competent army. There would also be consequences for Iraq not meeting the benchmarks, the aides said -- these were likely to be limits on reconstruction aid, as in a proposal by Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner that was endorsed by the Senate last week. At the time, leading Senate Democrats portrayed that plan as being far too weak. Democrats are hoping their liberal members will stick with the bill and that some Republicans will join in now that timetables for withdrawal appear to be gone. "I would support it on the understanding that they will have the withdrawal language in the (fiscal) '08 bill" for defense spending, said Rep. James Moran, a Virginia Democrat who played a role in the four-month wrangle over the war money.
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#1. To: aristeides (#0)
Goddamn pussies.
#2. To: bluedogtxn (#1)
As a pre-1994 "R", have a drink on me and welcome to the club. I'd gloat to the people on this and other sites who called me a "GOP shill" for daring to suggest that the DNC would not halt the war, but my and others like me being right means a whole bunch more innocent people are going to die. Shitty deal all around.
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