Anti-war Democrats in the US Senate lost a bid to use Congress' power of the purse to compel US President George W. Bush to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by March 31 next year.
But defiant Bush opponents, smarting on Wednesday from again failing to handcuff Bush on war strategy, vowed to step up a battle of attrition in the hope of ending a four-year entanglement which polls show most Americans now oppose.
The latest burst of acrimony between Congress and the White House on Iraq also drew new battle lines for a tough round of compromise talks, involving the House of Representatives, on a new war funding budget next week.
"Our resolutions have not passed, but they will pass, I don't know how many more bodies will come home, how many more injured soldiers there will be," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said.
The Democratic measure, overwhelmingly knocked down by 67 votes to 29, would have required troop redeployments to start within 120 days of the bill becoming law and would have choked war financing when complete.
The White House said that the Senate made clear it opposed the timetables for withdrawal, which Bush has always vowed to reject.
"Simply withdrawing on a timetable is not something that the American people or for that matter Democrats and Republicans in the Senate support," spokesman Tony Snow said.
"Only 29 members of the Senate voted for establishing a date for defeat," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said.
But Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, who authored the resolution, said the coalition to end the war in the Senate was growing.
"The support for changing course in Iraq has grown considerably since ... last June," when only 13 senators voted for a troop withdrawal date, he said.
The Senate was expected to vote yesterday on a resolution clearing the way for new talks with the House and White House aides on producing a merged replacement budget that Bush would sign.
A Republican amendment sponsored by Representative John Warner that required Bush to report to Congress in July on the Iraqi government's progress toward certain political benchmarks, scored 52 votes for and 44 against.
Though short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance, Democrats billed the tally as a sign of increasing Republican disquiet over war strategy.
"I believe today's votes mark the beginning of the legislative end game on Iraq," former Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry said.
Wednesday's votes were scheduled by Senate Democrats to test Senate opinion on Iraq, crank up the heat on Bush and probe growing anxiety on the war.
Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, her top rival Senator Barack Obama and fellow hopefuls representatives Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden also voted for the withdrawal bill.
In a significant toughening of her position, Clinton, still criticized on the campaign trail for voting in 2002 to authorize Bush to go to war, said on Tuesday she wanted to send a "clear message" that Democrats were united on ending the war.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS