War funding resolution clears House

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, flanked by House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina left, and Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., meets reporters Friday on Capitol Hill after a sharply divided House voted to order President Bush to bring troops home from Iraq next year.

? By a narrow margin reflecting deep divisions over the Iraq war, the House voted Friday to set a September 2008 deadline for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, confronting President Bush with his most serious challenge over the conflict and setting the president and Democratic leadership on a collision course over war powers.

Soon after the bill passed 218-212, Bush reiterated his threat to veto the legislation, which is tied to a $124 billion spending bill that includes funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush accused the Democrats of jeopardizing American troops in the field in an attempt “to score political points” against the administration.

If a new spending bill, without conditions, is not approved and signed into law before April 15, the president warned, it would put troops and their families in danger as current funding of the war is set to dry up in a matter of weeks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that a holdup in funding would force the Army to delay training of units and halt repair of vital equipment.

But on Friday, claiming her most significant political victory since voters handed control of Congress to the Democrats in the midterm elections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not blinking, saying that Democrats would fight to make their proposal law.

“The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “The American people see the reality of the war. The president does not.”

It seems unlikely the measure will become law, at least in its current form. The Senate has rejected one Iraq withdrawal measure and is preparing to debate another one next week.

Bush countered the Democrats by saying their plan to set a certain end date for the war was ill-advised, and he criticized them for attaching extraneous “pork-barrel” spending to the bill – pet projects with no direct connection to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but meant to win over on-the-fence Democrats. Among the projects attached to the legislation are funding for spinach subsidies and money to rebuild levees that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

“This bill has too much pork, too many conditions and an artificial timetable for withdrawal,” Bush said. “As I have made clear for weeks, I will veto it if it comes to my desk.”

The withdrawal provision calls for U.S. troops to be out of Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008. The bill also calls for the Iraqi government to achieve a series of performance benchmarks and for Bush to certify the readiness of American troops being deployed.