After Bush's veto, a hunt for middle ground

WASHINGTON — With President Bush's veto Tuesday of a war-spending bill that demanded timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Democratic congressional leaders will be pressed to find a way to fund troops on the front line while keeping pressure on the administration to wind down an unpopular war.

Bush faces his own challenge: to find a compromise with Democrats who gained power on a wave of public opposition to the war and who insist that they will not give the president a blank check to continue his Iraq policy.

Timing his veto for evening television newscasts, Bush said, "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. ... All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength."

Insisting that "setting a timeline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure," the president called on Congress to pass a spending bill he can sign. "Many Democrats saw this bill as an opportunity to make a political statement about their opposition to the war. They sent their message, and now it is time to put politics behind us and support our troops with the funds they need."

After four months of sparring between the White House and Congress, the veto of the $124 billion war bill came as no surprise. The question now, for both the president and Congress, is finding a formula for continued funding of a disputed war that both can accept. That work could start today at a White House meeting of Bush and congressional leaders.

"He has said 'no' to timelines, and we have said 'no' to a blank check," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the House Democratic caucus. "Those things are off the table, and everything else is on the table. ... There is no way he is getting that money without a change in policy."

Bush and lawmakers are under pressure to reach agreement on a funding plan before the Defense Department runs short of money to pay for a war in Iraq that costs the government $8.6 billion a month.

Iraq developments

U.S. and Iraqi officials chased reports Tuesday that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed by rivals north of Baghdad. But U.S. military officials said they could not confirm the death and would await results of DNA testing. The reports of al-Masri's death occurred as al-Qaida in Iraq is locked in a power struggle with other Sunni insurgents angry over its effort to dominate the movement.

Iran extended $1 billion in credits for reconstruction projects in Iraq, a senior official said Tuesday ahead of this week's international conference in Egypt on stabilizing Iraq.

Mortar rounds crashed into the U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad on Tuesday — the second such barrage in 12 hours — and gunmen ambushed Shiite travelers as part of attacks that killed at least 44 people nationwide.

The U.S. military said a soldier died Tuesday of nonbattle causes, but gave no other details. The soldier's identity was withheld pending notification of relatives.

Military prosecutors in San Diego agreed to withdraw criminal charges against Marine 2nd Lt. Nathan Phan, 26, accused of beating Iraqi detainees in the town of Hamdania, in exchange for testimony against three subordinates, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Seattle Times news services

The Congressional Research Service said the Army can sustain its operations "through most of July" without new funding, while Bush administration officials have said the military might face a funding crunch as early as May 15.

Tuesday's confrontation capped a day of high political stagecraft, with Bush traveling to the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., to press his case for the war, with congressional leaders holding an unusual flag-draped signing ceremony for their spending bill and with Bush swiftly announcing his veto in the Cross Hall of the White House.

Potential for compromise

Several alternatives to the bill could be possible, according to congressional sources, including tying additional war spending to benchmarks for Iraqi progress while also allowing the president a "waiver" for keeping troops in Iraq even if those milestones are not met.

The vetoed measure set benchmarks for the Iraqi government to develop its military forces and take actions to achieve national reconciliation. If Bush didn't certify that the benchmarks were being met, the bill would have required that U.S. troops start leaving Iraq by July 1, with a goal of ending the withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2007. If the benchmarks were met, the withdrawal would begin Oct. 1 and end by the same goal.

Another potential scenario could link benchmarks for progress in Iraq to redeployment of American troops away from urban areas and into Iraq's desert regions, according to Emanuel, who met privately with other Democratic leaders Tuesday.

Any new measure must delicately balance possible defections from the most insistent anti-war Democrats, such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., with possible pick-up votes for the measure from moderate Republicans.

"The issue will be, how do we keep up the heat" on Bush, Schakowsky said, citing her sole criterion for a compromise: "Does it help move the ball downfield to ending the war?"

Schakowsky said she isn't sure she can support a bill without a timeline for withdrawals.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a war critic who is the House's top defense appropriator, said a new, scaled-down bill stressing funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is "written and ready to go." Murtha said he sympathizes with war opponents who want to end U.S. involvement now, but "we've got to fund the damn operations."

Of course, any compromise would require a thumbs-up from the White House, with Democrats lacking the votes to override the president's veto of withdrawal timelines that passed only narrowly.

"The most important thing is we don't want anything that is going to hamstring the military," said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, noting that "the idea of benchmarks is hardly new" and voicing optimism about an agreement. "The president is pretty confident that we are going to get to a place where we are going to get the kind of flexibility we need and at the same time send the message to the Iraqis that we want to succeed."

Acknowledging the difficulty in holding Democrats together for a compromise, Emanuel also predicted that House Republicans would be eager to sign on to a deal that gains White House approval. Now, he said, "we've got to figure out the combination to the lock."

Before the veto, Democrats defended their bill at an unusual signing ceremony. "This legislation respects the wishes of the American people to end the Iraq war," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has accused Bush of being in "a state of denial" over a war already "lost," said the timelines that Congress passed could remove troops from an "intractable civil war" and insisted that the veto "means denying our troops the resources and the strategy they need."

"Mission accomplished"

With Bush freshly returned from the Central Command in Florida, where the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are managed, congressional leaders delivered their spending bill on the fourth anniversary of the president's "Mission Accomplished" appearance on an aircraft carrier, where he declared that major combat in Iraq was over.

At that time, 139 Americans had died in Iraq and two-thirds of Americans approved of the president's job performance. Since then, 3,212 more service members have died in Iraq and only a third of the public thinks Bush is doing a good job.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino testily reminded reporters Tuesday that the president never actually said "mission accomplished." "That speech has been widely misconstrued," she said. The White House denounced the timing by Congress as a "PR stunt."

Pelosi dismissed the complaint. "The fact is that the bill passed last week," she said, explaining that paperwork had been completed Monday and she had been away for a funeral. "Today is the first day that I can sign the bill."

The president has used his veto power just once before, when he blocked a bill last year that would have expanded federal support for embryonic stem-cell research.

The House today is expected to try to override the president's veto, but Democrats concede they will fall far short of the two-thirds necessary.

Additional information from Los Angeles Times, McClatchy Newspapers, USA Today and The Associated Press