White House Denies Debating Troop Withdrawal
By Tabassum Zakaria
Published July 9, 2007 by Yahoo! News (//http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070709/ts_nm/iraq_usa_debate_dc;_ylt=Ai6Opwt46f_Uy5ZvH5hHk5is0NUE)
President George W. Bush has no plans to withdraw troops from Iraq now, the White House said on Monday, despite increasing pressure from members of his own Republican party for a change in war strategy.
The New York Times reported on Monday that debate was intensifying inside the White House over whether Bush should try to prevent more Republican defections by announcing intentions for a gradual withdrawal of troops from high-casualty Iraqi areas.
"There is no debate right now on withdrawing forces right now from Iraq," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
The Times said officials fear the last pillars of political support among U.S. Senate Republicans for Bush's Iraq strategy were collapsing.
"The president has said many times, that as conditions required and merit, that there will be, in fact, withdrawals and also a pulling back from areas of Baghdad and so on," Snow said.
"But the idea of trying to make a political judgment rather than a military judgment about how to have forces in the field is simply not true," he said.
The administration is compiling an interim report to deliver to Congress by Sunday on Bush's strategy in which he sent thousands of additional troops to Iraq.
The report has gained significance as an increasing number of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers call for a change in Bush's strategy for the unpopular war.
Snow called the July report a "first snapshot" and described the president's strategy as still in its early stages because it took time for the "surge" to become fully operational. The report will not discuss any timetable for withdrawal, he said.
"This is not a midpoint of operations in Baghdad, but really the very beginning," Snow said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman also tried to temper expectations about the report, saying it was only recently that Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, had the full capability he had sought to conduct operations in Iraq.
"I don't think that anyone would expect all the benchmarks to be met or achieved at the front end of the surge operations," Whitman said.
Bush's public opinion ratings are at the lows of his presidency amid discontent over the Iraq war where sectarian violence results in almost daily bloodshed.
The White House played down the much-anticipated September 15 report, when Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, must present an assessment on Iraq's security and political progress.
"Nor do we think that it is accurate to think that September 15th is the drop dead date and everything should be completed," Snow said.
The Senate is preparing this week to begin what is likely to be a contentious debate on the war's future and financing, and four more Republican senators recently declared they can no longer support the president's strategy.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)
There's heat raising that isn't the summer sun's doing. I find it hard to say what's going to happen, but I think that it may end up in the streets more than ever. And in people calling and emailing Congress. Sep 29 there will be a huge march on DC, and I'm sure demonstrations around the country and the world. It will come on the heels of General's Petraeus's report on Iraq to Bush. They've already downplayed this, as this article says. But I'm better the corporate press, always looking for a brawl to cover, is going to tie this report to the demonstration to what happens in Congress to what Bush says.
Heat, heat, heat...
I'm not a big fan fo mainstream media. I'm also betting the corporate press ignores any protests until the internet again proves to be the voice of freedom by forcing the administration's journalistic lapdogs to at least acknowledge reality.
Imo, the current administration studied the roll of the press in the vietnam war and has gone to great lengths to assure that very little reality seeps out of Iraq via amerikkan television. I'm willing to bet that the neocons partially blame the U$ media for allowing the public to sour on their dirty little war that could have been won if only.......
The mainstream press today seems more interested in celebrity gossip than investigating or even covering events truly relevant to our lives.
lw
Another example of the humongous url that stretches everything to the sides.
there! :twisted:
Beautiful!
Dems call for combat to end by 2008
By Anne Gearan and Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writers
Published July 10, 2007 by Yahoo! News (//http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq;_ylt=AhSeNpu3Er3RBVIPrEWPJ3XMWM0F)
A senior Democrat said Tuesday it was obvious the Iraqi government has made no progress and the only way to propel it was to begin pulling out U.S. troops.
In a countermove, President Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley and war adviser Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute arrived on Capitol Hill to consult with members.
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, proposed legislation with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that would order President Bush to begin pulling out troops in 120 days and end combat by April 30, 2008.
The measure would allow for some troops to remain to conduct counterterrorism, train the Iraqi security forces and protect U.S. infrastructure.
"There is much too little pressure on Iraqi leaders to do what they have to do," Levin, D-Mich., told reporters.
Democrats are reviving their push for troop withdrawals as a progress report on the war finds Baghdad has not met key targets for security, economic and political reform.
Members said they planned to receive details on the assessment Thursday morning, just as they likely will vote on the Levin proposal.
Rebuffing all such talk, President Bush said he won't succumb to political pressure. During a visit to Parma, Ohio on Tuesday, he reiterated that troop levels in Iraq "will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."
"I fully understand that this is a difficult war. It's hard on the American people but I will once again explain the consequences of failure," he said.
White House spokesman Tony Snow earlier Tuesday confirmed that the coming administration report to Congress would say that Iraq has not met all the benchmarks set for it. The nature of that report was revealed earlier to The Associated Press by a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But Snow argued that the assessment is only "a look at the starting line" of the U.S. troop surge and shouldn't be used by critics to demand withdrawal.
"What Congress will get this week is a snapshot of the beginning of the retooling of the mission in Iraq," he said.
Levin's proposal, offered as an amendment to a $649 billion defense policy bill, is expected to fail because Republicans say they still oppose setting a timetable on troop withdrawals.
But in a sign that GOP frustration with the war is growing, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said she was considering switching her position and backing the measure. Also considered likely supporters were Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon.
Sen. Susan Collins, Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and other moderates said they were considering an alternative proposal that would demand an end to combat and allow U.S. troops to conduct only a narrow set of missions. The measure would not identify a date.
"What many of us are looking for is a new strategy that would not be a precipitous pullout with all of the problems that would cause, but rather a plan to exit over the next year," said Collins, R-Maine.
Sen. John McCain, upon his return from Iraq, on Tuesday defended Bush's troop build up, contending that reinforcements had only just recently been put in place.
"I believe that our military in cooperation with our Iraqi security forces are making progress in a number of areas," he said, noting specifically a dramatic drop in attacks in Ramadi in the western Anbar province.
"Make no mistake. Violence in Baghdad remains at unacceptably high levels," McCain added. But the U.S. and Iraq seem to be "moving in the right direction," he said.
Reed of Rhode Island, who also visited Iraq last week, said he did not see enough progress to warrant the U.S. commitment there. Reed said that Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, told him that the limits of U.S. military resources will factor into his recommendation on what to do next.
"Come next spring, the ability to generate 160,000 soldiers and Marines in country virtually comes to an end," said Reed.
The administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has stressed a September time frame for a wide-ranging assessment of operational strategy after about 4 1/2 years of battle, and has said such a review would be more appropriate then.
Gates planned to talk to various lawmakers on Tuesday, after abruptly canceling a trip to Latin America this week so he could help shape this week's report to Congress.
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said that military commanders believe that, "we would be able to be in a better place in September to be able to provide some assessments and make some decisions with respect to the way forward."
So far, he said, commanders are saying the build up â€" which brought troops levels to about 157,000 â€" has had a "positive" effect.
But concern about continued U.S. troop losses, indications of drift within the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad and declining public support in this country for the war have driven some key Republicans closer to the position of Democrats demanding withdrawal.
One U.S. official said late Monday that the July report would push the administration to consider its next move. Another senior official, however, said that Bush and his advisers had already decided no change in policy was justified as yet because there was not enough evidence from Iraq.
Whether conditions merited a course shift, such as troop reductions or other scaling back of U.S. operations, would be decided after the September report, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk more freely about internal deliberations.
This spring, Congress agreed to continue funding the war through September but demanded that Bush certify on July 15 and again on Sept. 15 that the Iraqis were living up to their political promises or forgo U.S. aid dollars.
As I'd said not long ago, July is the month when Congress goes back to debating the War. It looks like it's not a funding bill fight, since I believe the funding is set through September. I think it's going to be more of a temperature-taking issue. How close are the Republicans, enough of them, to growing a conscience, or a sense of desparation regarding the 2008 elections, to cross over?
Bush is dug in. Remember when he was talking about bi-partisan cooperation? No way anymore. I'd guess it's because the reports coming in, and those due, are going to tell of a disaster getting worse. Nothing new for him to use to defend his indefensible position.
This is looking like how the Vietnam War ended, with a push, and a harder push, and finally enough to force its end. It's slow, people are dying, the danger for wider war remains every single day. But a sludgy move in the right direction.
House passes bill to withdraw troops from Iraq
Published Thursday, July 12, 2007 by the Washington Post (//http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071201725.html?hpid=topnews)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defying a White House veto threat, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation to bring combat troops out of Iraq by April 1, 2008.
By a vote of 223-201, the Democratic-controlled House approved the legislation in the hope it will pressure the Senate to attach a similar mandatory troop withdrawal timetable to a military policy bill it is debating.
Passage of the House bill marked the third time this year it has voted for timetables to end the U.S. involvement in the war that is now in its fifth year. Two previous efforts either died in the Senate or were vetoed by President George W. Bush.
The measure that passed on Thursday would tell the Pentagon to begin withdrawing combat troops within four months and complete the redeployment by April 1.
Under the bill, an unspecified number of U.S. soldiers would stay in Iraq to train Iraqi soldiers, conduct counter-terrorism operations and protect U.S. diplomats.
I don't think we have veto override numbers yet, but I do think we are getting there, and the longer this issue is in the headlines, the better. There is a LOT of scrambling going on in DC right now, a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering. I've read that the Pentago is planning a "post-surge" strategy already. And of course the Republicans in Congress up for re-election in 2008 are in a white terror.
The dis-connect is Bush himself. He thinks it can still work, like Hitler in his bunker in Berlin in 1945 moving non-existent armies around on his maps. Bush cannot abide the idea that his presidency is slipping from him and his triumph is nowhere to be found. He is a failure. A horrible, blood-costing failure.
I don't like the situation, don't trust it, but my hope is that the numbers are finally on our side. Between the expediency of some, and the bravery of others, this nightmare might be slowly ending.