The $124 billion House legislation would pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year but would require that combat troops come home from Iraq before September 2008 — or earlier if the Iraqi government did not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.
"The American people have lost faith in the president's conduct of this war," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not."
Just over an hour following the vote, Bush angrily accused Democrats of playing politics and renewed his promise to veto the spending legislation if it included their withdrawal timetable, despite administration claims that the money is needed next month by troops.
"These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen," he said.
This is shameful. While the hard core Left views the November election results as a mandate to lose the war, these types have believed we need to lose since before the war began.
Most Americans, including most Democrats, may be unhappy with how the war is going, but that is more the result of how the press reports on it and the loyal opposition's ridiculous critiques of the conduct than the actual war that we are winning. Americans still want to win.
The bottom line is that the House's vote is shameful. The enemy couldn't cut our supply lines if they tried and they've failed to defeat our forces on the battlefield. But our Congress will do both for the enemy. Our Congress opposes any effort to stop Syria and Iran from suppling the terrorists inside Iraq, but our Congress will relieve the enemy of the need to do anything to cut the supply lines of our forces. Trying to engineer our defeat goes far beyond even the broad scope of what our Left has defined as acceptable "dissent."
And really, this vote is shameful even on the wrong assumptions of our Left and our congressional leaders. If the war is truly lost as they believe, isn't letting our forces fight on for another year and a half before pulling them out just a way of ensuring that another 1500 American troops die? Or do the Nancy Boys believe we can win under this time restriction?
The president will veto this bill even if it makes it through the Senate (which it won't). But the sad thing is, we are operating on a two year time limit regardless of what Congress does. I imagine that by summer 2008, the draw down will have to start to keep the issue from being too damaging by the presidential election campaign.
I think we will win this race between standing up effective Iraqi security forces on the one hand and pulling out too soon. We've been in this race since fall 2004, and I'm honestly comforted that our Left hasn't lost us that race already. But it is disgusting that our own Congress is doing its best to drag us down and prevent us from winning that race.
Congress declared war. And now they are saying there is an expiration date on that approval. Shame on them.
