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US senate urges Bush to outline Iraq plan
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-16 08:41
The US GOP-controlled Senate rejected a Democratic call Tuesday for a
timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but urged President Bush to
outline his plan for "the successful completion of the mission" in a bill
reflecting a growing bipartisan unease with his Iraq policies.
The overall measure, adopted 98-0, shows a willingness to defy the president
in several ways despite a threatened veto. It would restrict the techniques used
to interrogate terrorism suspects, ban their inhuman treatment and call for the
administration to provide lawmakers with quarterly reports on the status of
operations in Iraq.
The bill was not without victories for the president, including support for
the military tribunals Bush has set up to try detainees at the prison in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet even that was tempered, with language letting the
inmates appeal to a federal court their designation as enemy combatants and
their sentences.
The Senate's votes on Iraq showed a willingness even by Republicans to
question the White House on a war that's growing increasingly unpopular with
Americans.
Polls show Bush's popularity has tumbled in part because of public
frustration over Iraq, a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,000
American troops.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said the outcome was "a vote of no
confidence on the president's policies in Iraq." Republicans "acknowledged that
there need to be changes made," he said.
But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist trumpeted the chamber's rejection of
the Democratic call for a withdrawal timetable.
"It is an absolute repudiation of the cut-and-run strategy put forward by the
Democrats," Frist said.
The fate of the legislation is uncertain. The House version of the bill,
which sets Pentagon policy and authorizes spending, doesn't include the Iraq
language or any of the provisions on the detention, interrogation or prosecution
of terrorism suspects.
The measure faces a veto threat from the administration over a provision that
imposes a blanket prohibition on the use of "cruel, inhuman and degrading"
treatment of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.
Even so, the Senate's political statement was clear — and made even more
stinging when the vote was held with Bush abroad, in Asia, an embarrassing step
Congress often tries to avoid. With Democrats pressing their amendment calling
for a calendar for withdrawal, Republicans worked to fend off a frontal attack
by Democrats by calling on the White House to do more.
On a 58-40 vote, Senate Republicans killed the measure Democratic leaders had
offered to force GOP lawmakers to take a stand on the war.
The Senate then voted 79-19 in favor of a Republican alternative stating that
2006 "should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty,"
with Iraqi forces taking the lead in providing security to create the conditions
for the phased redeployment of U.S. forces.
Like the Democratic proposal, the GOP measure is purely advisory, a statement
of the Senate's thinking. It does not require the administration to do anything.
Rather, it simply calls for the Bush administration to "explain to Congress
and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the
mission in Iraq" and to provide reports on U.S. foreign policy and military
operations in Iraq every three months until all U.S. combat brigades have been
withdrawn.
Underscoring the political stakes of Tuesday's votes, four of the five
Democrats who opposed establishing a timetable are up for re-election next fall,
three of them — Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida and Kent
Conrad of North Dakota — in states that Bush won in 2004.
Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the one Republican who voted for a timetable, faces a
tough re-election race in Rhode Island, which Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry won a year ago.
The overall bill includes provisions that, taken together, mark an effort by
Congress to rein in some of the wide authority lawmakers gave the president
following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a mixed bag for the president, the Senate also voted to endorse the Bush
administration's military procedures for detaining and prosecuting foreign
terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. But the provision
approved on a 84-14 vote also would allow the detainees to appeal their
detention status and punishments to a federal appeals court in Washington.
That avenue would take the place of the one tool the Supreme Court gave
detainees in 2004 to fight the legality of their detentions — the right to file
habeas corpus petitions in any federal court.
Sen. Lindsey Graham acknowledged possible political reasons for the wide
support of his measure. "I think it speaks to a bit of nervousness about the
public perception of how the war is going with respect to 2006," Graham said.
The bill also contains White House-opposed language limiting interrogation
tactics and banning the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of
foreigners in U.S. custody. The Bush administration has threatened to veto any
bill that includes language about the treatment of detainees, arguing it would
limit the president's ability to prevent terrorist attacks.
Reflecting senators' anger over recent leaks of classified information, the
bill also contains provisions that would require details of purportedly secret
CIA prisons overseas and strip security clearances of federal government
officials who knowingly disclose national security secrets.
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