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Senators working on fifth Iraq resolution

For congressional Democrats hoping to use their new majorities in the House and Senate to shape Iraq policy, it seems that the more they try, the harder it is to come up with a winning plan.

In the Senate, the armed services and foreign relations committee chairmen are writing a fifth Democratic proposal on Iraq aimed at getting U.S. troops out of combat operations while retaining a mission of training and support for Iraqi security forces.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, may offer their plan — in the form of a nonbinding resolution — as an amendment to the Surface Transportation and Rail Security Act, S 184. It is unclear how they will be able to overcome the main hurdle — the need for 60 votes to cut off debate in the 100-member Senate — that has blocked a final vote on other Iraq-related legislation.

The Senate’s majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats are not giving up, because a majority of the Senate has voted for a resolution opposing the current administration strategy for sending more troops to Iraq. “The Senate, sometime in the future, will continue to work its will on the issue until there is a change of course in Iraq,” Reid said Monday.

In the House of Representatives, Democratic leaders are trying to sell rank-and-file members on a proposal to attach strings to wartime funding in an effort to prevent the so-called troop surge. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, is the chief strategist on the proposal that would prohibit any U.S. service member from being deployed in Iraq for more than a year; prevent deployment of any troops that are not fully trained and equipped for the mission; demand troops have at least one year between rotations to Iraq; and cancel any use of stop-loss authority that blocks people with critically needed skills from getting out of the military.

Conservative Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, have balked at the Murtha plan because it cuts funding for military operations in time of war, and have asked Democratic leaders to find another way of expressing opposition to the Bush strategy. But liberal Democrats have told House leaders they won’t vote for the $100 million wartime supplemental funding bill unless it includes limits on how the money can be used.

The apparent disarray among Democrats allows Republicans to sit back and lob political hand grenades at efforts to write legislation.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday he opposes any bill in which legislators “would be telling our commanders and our troops how to do their jobs.”

The Levin-Biden plan to restrict troops to training, support and logistics missions, won’t work, Thune said. “What if those troops are fired upon? Can they not return fire because the Senate says they are not to have a combat role?”

The Murtha restrictions, Thune said, are “stunningly transparent, designed to embarrass the president and to woo liberal interest groups.”