Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with Representatives Jack Murtha, left, and David R. Obey at a press conference on Capitol Hill today. Win McNamee/Getty Images.This is going to be a big story. We're going to start with The New York Times:
WASHINGTON, March 8 — House Democratic leaders intensified their debate with President Bush over Iraq today as they announced legislation that would pull American combat troops out of Iraq before the fall of 2008.
“Only then can we refocus our military efforts on Afghanistan to the extent that we must,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. She said the Iraq withdrawal deadline would be attached to legislation providing nearly $100 billion requested by the Bush administration for the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns and money to expand health care for veterans.
Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the leadership’s proposal “will essentially redirect more of our resources to the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting the right war in the right place against the people who attacked us and who are giving Al Qaeda sanctuary.”
But despite the Democrats’ advantage in the House (233 seats, to 201 for the Republicans), the leadership’s proposal seems to have very little chance of advancing, since Republicans are nearly united against it and Democrats are split, with some conservatives saying it goes too far in aiming to wind down the war in Iraq and liberals saying it does not go far enough.
Indeed, the Republican minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, practically invited his Democratic colleagues to bring the measure to the floor.
“Can you defeat this bill?” Mr. Boehner was asked at a Capitol news conference.
“Oh, we can,” he replied.
Mr. Boehner said the Democratic leadership’s idea would be self-defeating for the United States, “telegraphing to our enemy” a timetable for pulling out. Mr. Bush has repeatedly made the same argument.
“Unfortunately, the Democrats’ latest plan is a twist on an old adage: failure at any cost,” Mr. Boehner said. “The Democrats are using the critical troop-funding bill to micromanage the war on terror, undermining our generals on the ground and slowly choking off resources for our troops.”
If a bill with an arbitrary deadline were ever passed, Mr. Boehner said, America’s enemies in Iraq would “step back, sit back and wait until the dates come and go and then go ahead and press your attack.”
But Mr. Obey said the Democratic leadership’s plan “will set a timeline for bringing the United States’ participation in Iraq’s civil war to an orderly and responsible close.”
First, this is the big political battle shaping up over a proposed U.S. troop withdrawal before the fall of 2008. Not only are the political polls showing President Bush's job approval ratings dropping to 29 percent, but also that the American public trusts Congress more that Bush regarding Iraq. This sets the stage for the Democrats to introduce a comprehensive plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq. The Republicans have also drawn their battle lines on this legislation, with Boehner hyping the same, stale, White House argument that the Democratic plan will aid the terrorists. The House Republicans know that they cannot defeat this bill. The real debate will take place in the closely-divided Senate, where the Senate Democrats will need to pull some Republican votes away for passing this bill. And even then, it is a good chance that such a bill will not gain enough votes in both the House and Senate in order to override a presidential veto.
So what is this House bill that the Democrats are introducing? According to The Washington Post:
House Democrats today unveiled a plan for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of August 2008, introducing legislation that attaches a complex series of conditions to military spending requested by President Bush.
The plan, described in a Capitol Hill news conference by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders, would require Bush to certify that the Iraqi government is meeting military, political and economic benchmarks this year. If he cannot, it would move up the U.S. withdrawal to as early as the end of this year.
Regardless of Iraqi progress in meeting the benchmarks, the plan calls for the gradual redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq starting March 1, 2008, and ending within six months.
[....]
Dubbed the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans Health and Iraq Accountability Act, the bill requires the Pentagon to stick to its standards for training and equipping combat troops being sent abroad, and it enforces rules that limit their tours to no more than 13 months and stipulate that they have to stay home for at least a year between tours.
The bill also shifts more resources into the war in Afghanistan, where Democrats say the real war on terrorism should be fought to prevent the resurgence of the radical Islamic Taliban movement and the al-Qaeda terrorist network that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
[....]
As explained by the Democrats, the plan to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq requires Bush to hold the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to benchmarks that Bush himself has set in calling for progress toward national reconciliation. While setting out steps he expects the Iraqi government to take, however, Bush has steadfastly refused to set any sort of a timetable or to spell out penalties for failing to meet the commitments.
Under the plan, Bush must certify by July 1 that there is progress in meeting the benchmarks. If such certification is not submitted, the proposed legislation calls for the United States to then begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq on a six-month timetable.
If Bush provides the initial certification, he must subsequently certify by Oct. 1 that the Iraqis have finished meeting the benchmarks. If the second certification is not forthcoming, the 180-day withdrawal period would start then, with completion of it set for the end of March 2008.
Regardless of whether the Iraqis meet the benchmarks or not, the United States must start withdrawing combat troops from Iraq by March 1, 2008, and complete the process by the end of August, according to the plan.
This is a pretty comprehensive plan that the House Democrats have introduced. First, it requires President Bush to twice certify whether the Iraqi government is meeting the benchmarks towards "national reconciliation" in reducing the ethnic civil war taking place there. The Bush administration has constantly set these benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but has refused to impose any penalties if the Iraqi government fails to meet such certifications. In other words, the Bush administration has kept an open-ended commitment to the war. The Democrats have changed the rules here. They are both demanding penalties to imposed on the Iraqi government for failing to achieve benchmarks, and demanding an overall withdrawal timetable against the Bush administration. The key thing to remember here is that the Democrats are proposing legislation regarding Iraq--whether it is non-binding resolutions, or withdrawal timetables, or even bills to cut the Iraq war funding. These bills will obviously be opposed by the Republicans in Congress, and will be vetoed by President Bush. However each debate, each GOP filibuster, each vote, will be used by the Democrats to attack the pro-war Republicans in both Congress, and the presidential candidates.
And right now, the polls are showing that Americans want out of Iraq.
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