House passes Iraq Withdrawal bill

[Balta1701]

[Texsox]

[Balta1701]

The last 10 seconds or so of that...

[Texsox]

The last 10 seconds or so of that...

 

The whole thing. The money was priceless.

[NorthSideSox72]

Awesome.

[NorthSideSox72]

The Senate passed the bill as well, 51-47, mostly party lines. Hagel and Smith (OR) voted for, Lieberman voted against, with Enzi (R-WY) and Tim Johnson (D-SD) not voting.

 

Now goes to the President to be vetoed.

 

The real game is, what's next? If he vetoes, do the Dems have enough guts and/or leverage and/or votes to actually say "fine, then no money for your war"???

Edited March 29, 2007 by NorthSideSox72

[FlaSoxxJim]

The real game is, what's next? If he vetoes, do the Dems have enough guts and/or leverage and/or votes to actually say "fine, then no money for your war"???

 

Sadly, no they don't.

 

Now that we are at this stage, I'm not sure why the president was so vocal in vowing to veto the bill if they came to him containing the withdrawal timetable. That adversarial posturing certainly emboldened the bring-it-on attitude of the Dems and others voting for the bills. But since the withdrawal dates are, sadly, non-binding wouldn't the best strategy for Bush have been to refrain from the veto talk and then just craft an "F-You, Congress" signing statement thanking them for the war funding but also indicating that he would do whatever he damn well pleased in regard to the timetables?

 

I'm glad he didn't take that route and has backed himself into a corner where he'll have to veto, but

it would have been easier for him to just ignore the edicts of Congress the way he usually does, no?

[Texsox]

Shortly before the final vote, the Senate agreed 98-0 to add $1.5 billion for mine-resistant vehicles for Marines, and 93-0 to aid a program to track down convicted sex offenders.

 

Members also agreed 96-1 to prohibit funds in the bill to be used for spinach farmers. The vote was orchestrated by Republicans to target some of the extra spending added to the bill by Democrats; while the Senate bill didn't include any funding for spinach growers, the House measure contained $25 million.

 

Couple things.

 

1. I would probably have voted with the GOP on this one. I don't like the idea of a deadline. I don't have a better alternative, but this just doesn't feel right.

 

2. I wish those items above would receive more publicity. Not everything in Washington is along party lines, there is some common sense that gets passed around.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Clearly, Congress doesn't support the troops spinach farmers. If we let the vote against the troops spinach farmers stand then the terrorists rabbits have already won.

 

 

 

Couple things.

 

1. I would probably have voted with the GOP on this one. I don't like the idea of a deadline. I don't have a better alternative, but this just doesn't feel right.

 

Withdrawal never felt right to me either. And now look at me, I'm a father of two!

 

[Texsox]

Just a minor thing, they are soldiers not Troops. 3,200 American soldiers have died. Humans with moms and dads and kids and dreams. When did we start calling them troops? Is nuke a troop?

[kapkomet]

Musta been lost in the Chinese translation when they made all those stupid ass magnets that go on the Japanese cars.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Now that I've back over here I felt the need to chime in on what Im seeing.

 

 

Seems to me that the U.S. Military is afraid to let the Iraqi's do much of anything on their own. Much of this is justified because the Iraqi security forces, at least parts of them, are shadier than a palm grove. Seems that all the Iraqi forces do is man checkpoints and drive around the "hood" at high speeds with their lights flashing. If we don't let them act without big brother looking over his shoulder, I dont see how we're EVER going to finish this thing. Yeah they're going to take their lumps and yeah there will be problems but IMHO it's a lot better to let that stuff work itself out as early as possible so we can wash our hands of this thing the right way.