Senate approves war spending bill forcing troop withdrawal

Senate Democrats ignored a veto threat and pushed through a bill today requiring President George Bush to start withdrawing US troops from “the civil war in Iraq,” dealing a rare, sharp rebuke to the president as a wartime commander in chief.

In a mostly party line 51-47 vote, the Senate signed off on a bill providing $122bn (€91.5bn) to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also orders Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within 120 days of passage while setting a non-binding goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008.

The vote came shortly after Bush, in a move that his aides said was unprecedented, invited all Republicans from the House of Representatives to the White House to appear with him in a sort of pep rally to bolster his position in the continuing war policy fight.

“We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we’ve got a troop in harm’s way, we expect that troop to be fully funded,” Bush said, surrounded by Republicans, “and we got commanders making tough decisions on the ground, we expect there to be no strings on our commanders.”

“We expect the Congress to be wise about how they spend the people’s money,” he said.

The Senate vote marked its boldest challenge yet to the administration’s handling of a war, now in its fifth year, that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops, more than 50,000 Iraqis and cost more than $350bn (€262bn). In a show of support for the president, most Republicans opposed the measure, unwilling to back a troop withdrawal schedule.

The House, also run by Democrats, narrowly passed similar legislation last week. Party leaders seem determined that the final bill negotiated between the two chambers to send to Bush will demand some sort of timetable for winding down the war – setting them on course for a veto showdown with the president.

“We’ve spoken the words the American people wanted us to speak,” said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. “There must be a change of direction in the war in Iraq, the civil war in Iraq.”