Senate inching closer to Iraq rebuke for Bush

The Senate yesterday edged closer to a bipartisan rebuke of President Bush’s war policy, as 52 members backed benchmarks for progress in Iraq and a majority of Democrats supported a hard timeline for ending the war.

Both Iraq options fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass officially, while giving Democrats and Republicans alike room to claim victory as new conference talks begin this week on the war -funding supplemental. The votes also offer new ammunition for 2008, as all four Democratic presidential hopefuls in the upper chamber backed Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-Wis.) plan to withdraw most troops from Iraq within a year and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) added to his string of missed Iraq votes.

{mosads}The four Democratic leaders also voted for the Feingold amendment to the water-resources bill, a test roll call that showed the majority’s growing openness to using the power of the purse to force Bush’s hand on Iraq. Notably for Democrats, each of the four Republican leaders supported Sen. John Warner’s (R-Va.) plan to condition future aid to the Iraqi government on several benchmarks for political stability.

“It’s clear from the Warner amendment that Republicans are beginning to realize our path in Iraq is unsustainable,” a heartened Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) echoed the message his party saw in the Warner vote: “They want change,” he said of Republicans. Only three GOP senators, Jon Kyl (Ariz.), David Vitter (La.) and James Inhofe (Okla.), voted against the Warner language.

Warner, the respected former Armed Services Committee chairman, has described his proposal as a message to the Bush administration as well as the Iraqi government, reflecting a new era of congressional oversight over the war. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) focused his frustration on the Iraqis, however, declining to interpret his vote as one against the White House.

“I’ve said in the past and I’ll say again, the Iraqi government is a disappointment,” McConnell told reporters, adding that the “messages I think were sent in the Warner vote” are likely to predict the content of the war-funding bill that ultimately becomes law.

Antiwar groups cheered the Warner vote, despite waivers in the amendment that allow Bush to exempt himself from any restrictions on war spending.

The Feingold amendment split Democrats by the political leanings of their home states, with red-state senators from Evan Bayh (Ind.) to Byron Dorgan (N.D.) voting no. Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), two pragmatists among Reid’s inner circle of Iraq advisers, also voted against the funding-linked timetable for withdrawal.

Feingold’s measure had touched off frantic positioning by presidential candidates this week, following Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) round of TV ads and comments urging his fellow White House rivals to join him in cosponsoring the plan.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) eventually did so, but Dodd found wiggle room in Clinton’s and Obama’s statements that their votes for cloture did not necessarily mean they agree with Feingold.

“There’s a lack of clarity here — what is a cloture motion [in terms of substantive support]?” Dodd asked reporters. “How would you have voted if you had the chance to vote on it?”

Dodd previewed the difficulty Clinton and Obama may have in parsing their votes on Feingold’s plan while courting independents. “Cloture sounds like some sort of medical terminology” to the average American, he noted.

Senators were expected to take up an amendment from Levin that would have added presidential waivers to the Iraq-related portions of last month’s vetoed supplemental, but Levin abruptly pulled the measure. Levin explained on the floor that Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, had told him that Bush would veto the first supplemental even with waivers added.

Levin also acknowledged concerns from some senators that adding waivers might signify “intent to weaken what we did when we passed the supplemental.”

The Senate is expected to pass a bipartisan resolution on the supplemental today that would allow formal conference talks with the House to begin. Reid has threatened to keep the chamber in session through Memorial Day recess if a conference report is not on Bush’s desk by the holiday weekend.