Decision ‘08

Bush Promises To Veto New House Plan

The Democrats are still trying to find a way to placate the left without seeming unwilling to support the troops, and their latest proposal would pony up half of the needed war appropriations now and half in July, provided certain benchmarks are met. Bush is not having any of it:

President Bush would veto the new Iraq spending bill being developed by House Democrats because it includes unacceptable language restricting funding, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday morning.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Snow said of the bill: “There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill.”

While White House officials have previously made clear their displeasure about the new House bill, this is the first time any administration official threatened another veto. House leaders said there could be a vote as early as this week on the new measure.

Snow expressed hope that the administration and Congress could still work out a deal, noting that Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten was supposed to meet Wednesday with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)

Bush vetoed a recent Iraq war spending bill because it would have forced the administration to begin withdrawing troops in the next few months. The veto was sustained. House Democratic leaders are now putting together a proposal that would pay for the war through September but come with a different set of conditions: About half of the money would be dependent on Bush reporting to Congress this summer on the Iraqi government’s progress toward meeting security goals.

Following that report, Congress would have to vote separately to release the rest of the funds.

This comes at a time when top military brass are saying the surge must last at least until the spring of 2008:

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

“The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure,” said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now.

“What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not,” he said in an interview in Baghdad last week. “Are we making progress? If we’re not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we’re making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge.”

Well, April is a long way away, and I don’t know if we can make it that far without the help of al-Maliki and the Iraqi Parliament. There must be an oil-revenue-sharing final passage very soon. It’s the bare minimum of progress that will sustain political movement both at home and in Baghdad…