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Emboldened Senate pushes for changes on Iraq

Volleys were fired Monday between the White House and Senate over a growing disagreement about the way forward in Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., launched debate on the 2008 defense authorization bill with a promise to try to force the administration to make changes. “The war in Iraq is headed in a very dangerous direction,” Reid said, calling the last three months “the deadliest of the war.”

The buildup of U.S. combat troops ordered by President Bush “was supposed to provide Iraq political leaders the space to make the compromises necessary to unite this nation,” Reid says. “It hasn’t happened, despite the bravery of our troops.”

At the White House, spokesman Tony Snow said the administration wasn’t planning any immediate changes and wasn’t going to be swayed by Democratic amendments. “Ultimately, the president wants to withdraw troops based on the facts on the ground, not on the matter of politics,” Snow said.

The White House is asking for time to let the surge work, Snow said. That won’t be before fall. “What the president said all along is, of course, we’re going to draw down. But you have to draw down when it makes sense to do so,” Snow said.

But Reid, emboldened by the fact that several prominent Republican senators are also calling for a change in Iraq strategy without waiting until September, said the American public expects change “and they expect it now.”

One of the first tests will come Tuesday when the Senate debates an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would require troops to be guaranteed as much time at home as they spend deployed in a war zone. Webb’s amendment was introduced on the Senate floor on Monday and could come to a vote on Tuesday.

“With our military moving closer to the breaking point and states finding themselves less and less secure due to heavy National Guard rotations, this amendment will help us strengthen our military,” Reid said.

Webb said he has a bipartisan amendment that asks only for minimum times between deployments that would apply to be units and individuals. “It will set goals for where we ideally need to be,” Webb said.

“We are now in the fifth year of ground combat operations in Iraq. And this deck of cards is crashing down, and it’s landing heavily on the heads of the soldiers and the Marines who have been deployed again and again while the rest of the country sits back and debates Iraq as an intellectual or emotional exercise,” Webb said.

Senate Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he welcomed the debate. “Nobody has any doubt this is the No. 1 issue in the country,” he said.

Reid said Webb’s amendment is just a start. Along with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Reid will add an amendment to the bill that would restrict the role of U.S. combat troops in Iraq to direct counterterrorism and border security issues, putting a bigger burden on Iraqi security forces and police to control sectarian violence.

Related reading:

White House: No debate on withdrawal