House requires Bush to report on withdrawal from Iraq

Republicans keep snickering that Democrats can't force Bush to withdraw from Iraq, but the joke is on them. By forcing another report in December, and another three before the elections, Bush has to keep on coming up with new "good news" to give to an increasingly sceptical Congress and a public that no longer believes anything he says.

Meanwhile, Republicans will be forced to keep defending the occupation on a regular basis right up to the election. With only one-third of the country supporting the Decider's non-plan in Iraq (and with strong support only half that number), the Republicans have been forced into making this their war.
The American public is tired of 'progress' that somehow only means we have to stay in Iraq even longer. Iraq is still a country with an impotent government (one that increasingly looks like it isn't even sovereign at all), where "only" 300 a month are being killed in sectarian violence, where our new tribal terrorist "allies" are turning up dead, where mayors are being killed, and where our British allies are throwing in the towel to fight the "other war". When the elections come around, it will have been five years that we have been there. Five years to get back to the levels of violence that 'warranted' the surge in the first place. Nearly four of those years were filled with smiley, upbeat assessments of false progress. Now we have grim assessments of false progress. This is what Republicans will bring to the '08 elections, along with snarling accusations of treason for the 70% of the electorate who have given up on the Decider's scheme. Oh, and a new war with Iran and/or Syria to keep the defence contractors happy and the bill for the mess astronomical.

The Democrats will be the primary political beneficiary of the Republican "hang tough" policy, so they can snicker all they want.

U.S. House requires Bush to present plans on eventual troop withdrawal from Iraq

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to require President George W. Bush to present plans on eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

By a vote of 377 to 46, the House approved the bill requiring President Bush to report to Congress in 60 days, and every 90 days thereafter, on the status of its redeployment plans in Iraq.

The Democratic-led House has passed a sheaf of bills calling for a pullback from Iraq, but without the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

As the first compromise made on the Democrats-proposed bill concerning the war policy, Republicans said they agreed to back it up because it encourages Pentagon contingency planning already under way and does not mandate troop withdrawals.

However, Congress is still about to witness another battle with the White House when it votes on the government's request for emergency Iraq funding of 190 billion U.S. dollars.

Earlier in the day, three senior House Democrats proposed a plan to raise taxes to pay for the bill of 150 billion dollars for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

"If this war is important enough to fight, then it ought to be important enough to pay for," said David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee who sponsored the plan.

"By putting together this bill we hope people will stop ignoring what this war is costing American taxpayers and call the president's bluff on fiscal responsibility," he said.

The tax plan requires low- and middle-income taxpayers to add 2 percent and wealthier people add a 12 to 15 percent to their tax bill, which incurred opposition from Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican congressmen.

"Just as I have opposed the war from the outset... I am opposed to a war surtax," she said.

The war in Iraq is costing the United States about 10 billion dollars a month, while Afghanistan and other missions run about 2 billion dollars a month, according to official statistics.

Source: Xinhua