The Veto Has Struck Again. Good

Might as well get it on!

Lets have the showdown now, and find out just where we all stand.

The proverbial line has been drawn in the sand.

Let's have strength and courage not to back down.

This country cannot afford to do otherwise.

Junior once said that he would not trust a madman with the fate of our nation.

We must not, either.


War bill vetoed -- GOP lines waver
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Wednesday, May 2, 2007


(05-02) 04:00 PDT Washington -- President Bush carried through on his often-repeated threat Tuesday to veto a war spending bill requiring a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, but on Capitol Hill key Republicans started moving away from the administration's hard line against compromising with Democrats.

Republican lawmakers, who thus far had stayed solidly behind the president, say they could support binding benchmarks on the Baghdad government as the debate about the war goes forward in Congress.

Amid the showdown atmosphere, Bush is scheduled to meet with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders at the White House this afternoon to discuss how to proceed with a post-veto push to fund operations in Iraq.

Bush, in a short address to the nation Tuesday, said the troop withdrawal plan approved by Congress is a "rigid and artificial" deadline that must be rejected.

"Setting a deadline for withdrawal will be setting a date for failure, and that's unacceptable,'' Bush said from the White House. Moments earlier, he had vetoed the $124.2 billion bill that would have provided about $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of the federal fiscal year, Sept. 30. The legislation also would have set a Democrat-backed goal of withdrawing almost all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 2008.
Bush said the legislation, only the second bill he has vetoed during his presidency, was dangerous because it "substitutes the opinion of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.''

Democratic leaders said the president, with his veto, was denying the will of American voters, who last November elected an anti-war Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

"The president wants a blank check and Congress is not going to give it to him,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said to reporters minutes after Bush's veto.
"We had hoped the president would have treated this with the respect that a bipartisan majority of both houses supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people deserved,'' she added.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released late last week showed that voters by 56 to 37 percent supported the congressional troop withdrawal plan. In the same poll, 55 percent said victory in Iraq -- a war that has lasted more than four years and has claimed more than 3,350 American lives -- is no longer possible.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to press on. "If the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he will stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken,'' Reid said.

The House plans to vote on overriding Bush's veto today, a vote that everyone knows will fall well short of the two-thirds majority needed. The Senate won't even bother to hold such a vote.
Despite the Democrats' support for a troop withdrawal timeline, Bush said Tuesday he hoped they would come around to his point of view.

"They've sent their message, and now it's time to put politics behind us and support our troops with the funds," the president said.

But the focus will be whether Republicans, who fear their party will pay a steep political price in 2008 if they continue backing an unpopular war, start encouraging the president to give some ground in his standoff with Democrats -- who vowed to continue pushing for an end to U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

House and Senate Republican leaders joined Bush in attacking Democrats as defeatists who want to set a date for "surrender" in Iraq, but some also talked of trying to bridge the differences between the president and the Democrats.

Republican lawmakers want Democrats to abandon plans for a military withdrawal timeline in the war spending bill. Instead, Republicans say they're willing to require the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to agree on certain issues, such as sharing oil revenue, in order to receive a proposed $5.7 billion in annual U.S. economic and reconstruction aid. Those benchmarks were part of the war spending plan vetoed by Bush.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice rejected such an approach on Sunday, but that didn't stop Republicans from pressing ahead, indicating there could be space between their position and that of the White House.

"I think it's premature to declare unilaterally that it's off the table,'' said Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., the No. 3 ranked House Republican.

The second-ranking Senate Republican, Trent Lott of Mississippi, said he, too, is interested in talking to the Democrats about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

"You can't say it's time to negotiate and then say no if it includes this, that or the other,'' Lott said.

Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky already have started talks on post-veto moves for war funding.

Another Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, said the leaders should discuss all issues in seeking a deal.

"Everything has to be on the table. If the urgency is as significant as it is for the military, and it is, it means some compromise has to be arrived at,'' said Voinovich.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said Democrats realize their fight with Bush over the war will take a long time to play out.

"We're not going to abandon what the American people want us to do. It's about bringing the president around,'' Eshoo said. "He's driving a bad, indefensible strategy, and he's driving his own party into the ground.''

As Republicans offered the first hints of movement, it was unclear how much ground anti-war Democrats would be willing to cede to reach a deal.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., has suggested a two-month spending bill with the withdrawal language stricken. Others say that's impractical.

The Democratic leadership might be willing to strip out the troop withdrawal language from a new war spending bill because they plan to raise the issue again and again in upcoming legislation. For instance, a similar troop pullout plan could be inserted into the bill authorizing Pentagon operations for 2008, which is moving through the House Armed Services Committee and could reach the House floor in mid-May.

After that will come the fiscal 2008 military appropriations bill. Murtha said it will be voted on June 28, and he predicted that no matter what withdrawal language Democrats attach, a sizable number of Republicans will feel compelled to vote for it.

In addition to the withdrawal language, the vetoed bill set minimum standards for training and equipping U.S. military units before they could be sent to Iraq. It also set a one-year minimum rest period between deployments for units going back to Iraq.

The bill provided extra money for military and veterans' health care and funds for Hurricane Katrina recovery on the Gulf Coast, money Bush sought.

The Democratic leadership sent the bill, perhaps not coincidentally, to the president on the fourth anniversary of the day he flew out to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln off San Diego, stood before a huge banner saying "Mission Accomplished" and declared that major military operations in Iraq were over.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free