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.
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