US House of Representatives votes for Iraq withdrawal by spring

The Iraqi government is achieving only patchy military and political progress, the Bush administration admitted, in an assessment that war critics quickly seized on as confirmation of their dire warnings.

Within hours, the House of Representatives voted last night to withdraw US troops by spring 2008.

The House measure passed 223-201 in the Democratic-controlled chamber despite a veto threat from President George Bush, who has ruled out any change in war policy before September.

“The security situation in Iraq remains complex and extremely challenging,” the administration report concluded.

The economic picture was uneven, it added, and the government had not yet enacted vital political reconciliation legislation.

As many as 80 suicide bombers a month crossed into Iraq from Syria, said the interim assessment, which is to be followed by a fuller accounting in September from General David Petraeus, the top US military commander in the region.

“I believe we can succeed in Iraq, and I know we must,” Bush said at a White House news conference at which he stressed the interim nature of the report.

Describing a document produced by his administration at Congress’ insistence, he said there was satisfactory progress by the Iraqi government towards meeting eight of 18 so-called benchmarks, unsatisfactory progress on eight more and mixed results on the rest.

To his critics – including an increasing number of Republicans – he said bluntly: “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war. I think they ought to be funding the troops.”

But Democrats saw it differently.

A few hours after Bush’s remarks, Democratic leaders engineered passage of legislation requiring the withdrawal of US combat troops to begin within 120 days, and to be completed by April 1 2008.

The measure envisages a limited residual force to train Iraqis, protect US assets and fight al-Qaida and other terrorists.

The vote generally followed party lines: 219 Democrats and four Republicans in favour, and 191 Republicans and 10 Democrats opposed.

Jo Ann Emerson, a Missouri Republican, voted for troop withdrawals for the first time, contending that while she still opposed a swift pullout, “staying in Iraq indefinitely is equally unacceptable”.

“The report makes clear that not even the White House can conclude there has been significant progress,” said House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

To Bush and others who seek more time for the administration’s policy to work, Pelosi said, “We have already waited too long.”

Republicans sided with Bush – at least for now. The Bill “undermines General Petraeus, undermines the mission he has to make America and Iraq safe”, said the House Republican leader, John Boehner of Ohio. “What we have here is not leadership, it’s negligence.”

The 25-page administration report was issued in the fifth year of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,600 US troops and is costing US taxpayers an estimated £5bn (€7.4bn) a month.

Bush announced last winter he was ordering thousands of additional troops to the war zone, but the full complement has only arrived in recent weeks. “The full surge in this respect has only just begun,” the report said.

It warned of “tough fighting” during the summer as US and Iraqi forces “seek to seize the initiative from early gains and shape conditions of longer-term stabilisation”.

Before last night’s House vote, Republican aides said they hoped to suffer only a few party defections, but the administration faced a more volatile situation in the Senate.

There, three Republicans have already said they intend to vote for a separate withdrawal measure, and several others have signed on as supporters of a bipartisan Bill to implement a series of changes recommended last winter by the Iraq Study Group.