We could put the full court press on to get President Bush to sign the supplemental funding for Iraq into law, but it would be pointless. Set aside the unlikelihood of Bush flip-flopping on his promise to veto the bill. He just forced virtually the entire Republican caucus to vote against body armor and uparmored Humvees, against money for Walter Reed, against agricultural subsidies, against a hike in the minimum wage, and for an unending commitment to stay the course in Iraq. There is no way in hell that Bush can turn around and double cross them by signing this bill into law.
Yet, as Barack Obama notes:
“We are one signature away from ending the Iraq War. President Bush must listen to the will of the American people and sign this bill so that our troops can come home,” Obama said in a statement released by his office.
That is truly an accurate depiction of the situation. All Bush has to do is sign the supplemental funding bill and we will see a series of events take place. First, he will be unable to certify that Iraq is meeting the benchmarks in July, and he will have to begin drawing down the troops at that time. The troops would have to be home by the end of this year. Some troops may still remain in Iraq for the limited purposes of hunting terrorists, training Iraq security and police forces, and securing the American embassy (as they do in all countries). And, it’s true that Bush could use this provision as a loophole to maintain a large military presence, except…their are other provisions of the supplemental that will make it politically difficult to deploy troops in large numbers (like training and readiness requirements).
The bill doesn’t quite ‘end the war’ because it allows for some flexibility so that the President can use loopholes to maintain a military presence if events justify it. But the bill isn’t necessarily that much worse for allowing this flexibility. Under a mature and competent leadership, such flexibility would actually be desirable.
All of this is largely irrelevant because the President has no choice but to veto the bill after forcing his caucus to take a series of politically painful votes.
And that leaves us all with the question of what to do next. We could try to make a hopeless attempt to override the veto. I suspect that would be seen as a waste of time by the media and by most Americans. We already have the Republicans on the record several times over the supplemental. There’s not much to be gained by putting them on the record one more time.
The word is that the Democrats will begin funding the war in 2-3 month increments and force the GOP to keep coming back for more funds. However, Steny Hoyer doesn’t like that idea.
We’ll see.