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Iraq pullout timetable rejected

The Republican-controlled US Senate rejected a Democratic demand for a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq but urged President George W. Bush to outline his plan for "the successful completion of the mission."

Even the watered-down bill reflected growing bipartisan unease with Bush's Iraq policies.

The overall measure, adopted 98-0 on Tuesday, shows a willingness to defy the president in several ways despite a threatened veto. It would restrict the techniques used to interrogate terror detainees, ban inhuman treatment of them and tell the administration to provide lawmakers with quarterly reports on the status of operations in Iraq.

Bush, traveling in Japan, said he is happy to keep Congress informed of his plan to bring democracy to Iraq.

"It is important that we succeed in Iraq ... and we're going to," Bush said yesterday during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "The only way that we won't succeed is if we lose our nerve and the terrorists are able to drive us out of Iraq by killing innocent lives."

The bill was not without victories for the president, including support for military tribunals with which Bush wants to try detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Even that was tempered, however, with language letting the inmates appeal to a federal court their designation as enemy combatants and their sentences.

The Senate's votes on Iraq showed a willingness even by Republicans to question the White House on a war that's growing increasingly unpopular with the US public.

Polls show Bush's popularity has tumbled in part because of public frustration over Iraq, a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,070 US troops.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the outcome was "a vote of no confidence on the president's policies in Iraq." Republicans "acknowledged that there need to be changes made," he said.

Reid's counterpart with the majority Republicans, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, trumpeted the chamber's rejection of the Democratic call for a withdrawal timetable.

"It is an absolute repudiation of the cut-and-run strategy put forward by the Democrats," Frist said.

Bush also highlighted the rejection of the withdrawal amendment, calling it a "positive step."

"The Senate did ask that we report on progress being made in Iraq, which we're more than willing to do," Bush said. "That's to be expected. That's what the Congress expects. They expect us to keep them abreast of a plan that is going to work."

The fate of the legislation is uncertain. The House version of the bill, which sets Pentagon policy and authorizes spending, does not include the Iraq language or any of the provisions on the detention, interrogation or prosecution of terrorism suspects.

The measure faces a veto threat from the administration over a provision that imposes a blanket prohibition on the use of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of terrorism suspects in US custody.
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