Senate Joins House in Setting Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq
IRAQ
The Hour
Anthony Rotunno
Boston University Washington News Service
3/28/07
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Senate debate continued Wednesday on an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Iraq, following Tuesday’s vote to retain the legislation’s nonbinding provision establishing a firm timeline for troop withdrawal.
The Senate rejected, 48-50, an amendment to remove the timeline for withdrawal. With the House’s approval of similar but binding timeline legislation last week, this marks the first time since the war began that Congress has gone on record opposing the president’s policy to stay the course in Iraq. But President Bush already has said he will veto any bill demanding troop withdrawal.
Tuesday’s narrow vote was largely split along party lines, with only two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon, voting not to remove the requirement that U.S. combat forces leave Iraq by March 31, 2008, and one Democrat, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, voting to strike it from the bill.
The Connecticut Senate delegation also was split, with Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd voting to keep the withdrawal provision and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman voting to remove it.
“This vote sends a clear message to President Bush and others who believe that a protracted, embattled stay in Iraq is preferable to a clear course of action,” Dodd said in a statement following the vote. “I would have preferred to begin phased deployment even earlier, but this is a positive development that I strongly support.”
Dodd, a 2008 presidential candidate and one of the Senate’s most vocal critics of the president’s policies on the war in Iraq, has supported previous measures calling for troop withdrawal and proposed legislation to cap the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
“Even if the President vetoes this bill, which I would strongly urge him not to, Congress has taken a critical step in taking the U.S. policy in a new direction and stopping the administration’s failed policy,” he said.
Lieberman, in remarks on the Senate floor before the vote, said legislation supporting troop withdrawal goes against the nation’s “moral responsibility to the Iraqis.”
“It is contrary to our traditions; it is contrary to our values; and it is contrary to our interests,” Lieberman said. “And yet that is precisely what this Congress will be calling for if we order our troops to withdraw.”
A final vote on the Senate bill containing the troop withdrawal measure is expected Thursday.
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