GOP senators block Iraq pullout

Published 11:35 pm Wednesday, July 18, 2007

WASHINGTON – For the seventh time this year, Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a measure to change U.S. policy in Iraq, beating back the latest Democratic proposal to set a timeline for withdrawing troops.

Democrats fell eight votes short of the 60 votes demanded by Republican leaders for an amendment to the defense authorization bill being debated in the Senate.

Four Republican lawmakers joined Democrats, ending a round-the-clock session orchestrated by Democratic leaders Tuesday night to highlight what they alleged was Republican obstructionism.

The 52-47 vote to cut off debate on the proposal prompted more angry accusations from Senate Democrats, who said their Republican colleagues were resisting the will of the American people who wanted to bring the troops home.

“End this filibuster,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urged his Republican colleagues. “Stop blocking a vote on this crucial war-ending amendment. … We can make this the first day of ending the war.”

Reid pulled the defense authorization bill from the Senate floor after the vote, enraging Republicans.

The maneuver means that debate on the $649-billion measure – and other amendments calling for a change in Iraq – is on hold. Reid would not say when he would reintroduce the legislation.

The latest vote underscored the inability of Democratic lawmakers to persuade Republicans to join their legislative campaign to pressure President Bush to begin winding down U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

The four GOP votes – by Nebraska’s Chuck Hagel, Oregon’s Gordon Smith and Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins – were only two more than Democrats mustered three months ago.

In April, the Senate passed a war-spending bill 51-47 that set a nearly identical timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops. The president subsequently vetoed the measure.

Several prominent Senate Republicans, including former Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia and former Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar of Indiana, proposed a measure mandating that Bush develop a plan to redeploy forces at the beginning of next year.

Other Republicans lined up behind a plan to implement the general recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

But Reid and other senior Democrats repeatedly have criticized the measures as too weak. And they stuck with their proposal to set dates for withdrawing U.S. forces, arguing that such legislation is the only way to force Bush to change his strategy.

“This war was born in deception. At the highest levels of our government, it has been waged with incompetence and arrogance,” Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said in an impassioned address on the floor of the Senate.

“This war will not end if we rely on the insight or humility of this president. We … must speak for the American people. We must speak for our war-weary soldiers. And we must bring this war to an end.”