Congress: New direction for Iraq in the air

Expectations are mounting in Congress, including among the White House’s Republican backers, that President George W. Bush will later this year have little option but to change course in Iraq.

Despite Bush’s victory over anti-war Democrats in securing a new 100 billion dollar budget to fund the war through September, attention on Capitol Hill is already shifting to the bitter political fights to come.

Lawmakers left Washington for a week-long recess as a report said huge cuts in the current 147,000-strong US garrison in Iraq could be in the offing.

“I feel a direction change in the air,” Democratic congressman John Murtha, a gruff former Marine and Vietnam veteran said last week, as he intensified his emotional quest to end the war.

Significantly, the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who has largely kept his party in step with the president, despite deep skepticism among some Senators, is also predicting a sea-change in Iraq policy.

“I think the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president himself to lead it,” McConnell said on Friday.

After a prolonged test of wills with Congress, Bush last week got his war funding, after forcing Democrats to abandon their drive for troop withdrawal timetables.

But Democrats, though conscious they lack the veto-proof majorities to force Bush to change tack, are certain their campaign is beginning to yield results.

“We will oppose the President’s failed war policy at every turn,” Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said.

“This fight will continue every day.”

Democrats are already eyeing the several defense department budget bills pending in Congress over the next few months, as vehicles to handcuff Bush on war strategy.

“This summer will be very important here in Washington,” said congressman Rahm Emanuel, a former top aide to ex-president Bill Clinton and now part of House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s brain trust.

“Republicans will be consistently asked to take a new vote on bringing an end to the current course in Iraq and bringing a new direction.”

The strategy is designed to ratchet up pressure on Republicans, who the theory goes, will be increasingly anxious about supporting Bush in his waning days as president, as an unpopular war rages and US elections loom in 2008.

Leaders on both sides of the partisan divide are increasingly looking towards September, when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is due to report on the course of the war.

Anything less than an unequivocal declaration of success for Bush’s strategy to surge nearly 30,000 extra troops into Iraq, will likely lead to increasing and perhaps irresistible demands to start disengaging from the country.

As the political battle played out in Congress, emotions became increasingly taut, as lawmakers took to the floor of both chambers to mourn constituents who fell in battle.

In a grim month for US troops in Iraq — more than 90 had died by Saturday — the top House Republican John Boehner broke down in tears while warning about terrorism, and Reid eulogised those killed in an “American tragedy” in Iraq.

As expectations mounted that a critical point was approaching in Iraq, the New York Times reported Saturday the White House was working on several “concepts” for reducing the number of US combat troops in Iraq by as much as 50 percent next year.

Citing unnamed senior administration officials, the newspaper said the move could cut troop levels in Iraq to roughly 100,000 by the time the 2008 US presidential election moves into high gear.

They would also greatly scale back the mission that Bush set for the US military when he ordered it in January to win back control of Baghdad and Anbar Province, the report said.

The mission would instead focus on the training of Iraqi troops and fighting Al-Qaeda, while removing Americans from many of the counter-insurgency efforts inside Baghdad.

Those details closely mirror Democratic Party plans for reconfiguring the US posture in Iraq, themselves modelled on the last year’s report by the Iraq Study Group, which was initially rejected by the White House.

The White House responded to the newspaper report by saying it was premature to talk about reducing the troop levels.

© 2006 AFP

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