Senate rejects withdrawal proposal

The Senate Democrats and the anti-war freakazoids got handed their collective ass today, according to the Wall Street Journal;

The Senate overwhelmingly rejected calls for an early withdrawal from Iraq as Democrats struggled to find a path to end weeks of confrontation with President Bush over emergency war funding through Sept. 30.

The 67-29 defeat was even more decisive than a 255-171 House vote last week in which similar withdrawal language split Democrats and was rejected. But the gap between the White House and the new Democratic majority over Iraq appears to be only widening as the administration takes a hard line against even setting a target date for redeployment, subject to the president’s approval.

Such a compromise had been crafted by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, but the Michigan Democrat abruptly withdrew the proposal this morning after White House officials said it would still provoke a presidential veto.

Levin has just realized what I’ve been saying for weeks; if the Democrats keep sending pre-vetoed legislation to the President, they’re gonna be the one’s held responsible by the voters next year. And since the troops or national security are not the Democrats’ minds, maybe they’ll settle down and get some work done now. I don’t think they could get their lunch order through Congress these days. 

And, if you’re wondering what the bill was that Levin was proposing, I found it at Flopping Aces and it was a doozy;

Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., have offered an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act to begin the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by October 1, 2007, if certain commitments are not met by the Iraqi government.

The withdrawal would have to be completed within six months, the same terms that drew a presidential veto when they were made part of the 2007 supplemental war spending bill.

Yeah, you read that right – it was included in a water resources bill. Of all the underhanded, slimy crap, they tried to slip an anti-war measure into a conservation bill for a double-whammy on the administration.

I’m fairly certain that if the war ended tomorrow, though, the Democrats would put it in our loss column and find something else to complain about by tomorrow tonight.

Dafydd at Big Lizards discusses the impact this will have on the Democrat Presidential candidates.

Category: Politics