KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - A Democratic plan to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq by next year passed a key test in the US House of Representatives today, but the Senate failed to impose a similar deadline for ending the 4-year-old war.
On a mostly partisan 36-28 vote, the House Appropriations Committee approved a US$124.1 billion emergency spending bill, including US$95.5 billion to continue fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
The legislation, which could be debated in the full House as early as next week, would set strict conditions on continuing the Iraq war for the next 18 months and would end US combat there by September 1, 2008.
The White House has threatened a presidential veto of the measure, which first faces tough going in the Senate.
"We are trying to deliver a message to the politicians in Iraq that we are not going to sit around forever watching them dither, watching them refuse to compromise, while our troops die," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said as his panel began a sometimes-heated debate on the war.
The legislation marked the first time a congressional committee voted to put binding limits on the duration of the Iraq war -- an idea that Republicans in both chambers denounced as dangerous.
Senate Republicans managed to stop a separate Democratic resolution encouraging President George W. Bush to bring US troops home by March 31, 2008.
That measure failed on a 50-48 vote in which 60 votes were needed for passage, but critics of the war said they would not give up, and may try again in the spending measure.
"I predict to you that before we get through the summer, the Republicans are going to understand they cannot continue to choose the president over the troops," Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said after the vote.
But Senate Republicans said they were satisfied with the outcome, saying it showed that "a majority does not support ... timelines" for withdrawal, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, put it.
CAMPAIGN PROMISE
Even if congressional Democrats fail to enact legislation to end the increasingly unpopular war, they are hoping to accomplish two things -- to deliver on last year's campaign promise that they would try to bring the troops home and to apply pressure on the Iraqi government to take more responsibility for security, a goal Bush also seeks.
Congress hopes to finish work on the war-spending bill by next month, when the Pentagon says it will run out of money to wage war.
Next week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will write its version of the war-spending bill and it was not yet clear what conditions the panel might impose on the money. But Chairman Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, said on Wednesday, "The Congress of the United States will not support an unaccountable, open-ended war in Iraq."
On Thursday the Senate also voted 82-16 to pass a non-binding resolution by Republicans that vows to protect funding for US troops in the field. For weeks Democrats had resisted voting on this proposal, fearing its passage would overshadow their focus on ending the war, or commit them to opposing funding cuts for the conflict.
But then Democrats produced their own proposal on supporting the troops, which passed 96-2 and vowed troops would get all the support they need, including medical care when they return home -- thus highlighting the scandal over poor treatment of wounded soldiers at the military's flagship hospital, Walter Reed.
Next week's vote in the full House is expected to be close. To entice wavering lawmakers to vote for the bill, House Democrats have included $6.4 billion, significantly more than Bush sought, in new money to help southern states rebuild after devastating hurricanes in 2005.
- REUTERS
