Four years after declaring victory, Bush vetos Iraq withdrawal plan

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2502483.ece

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

President George Bush vetoed a $124bn (£62bn) war-funding bill with target dates for an American troop withdrawal next year ­ a long-promised move that deepens the historic constitutional clash over Iraq between the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Republican White House.

"Setting a deadline would demoralise the Iraqi people and encourage killers across the broader Middle East," President Bush said in a brief, nationwide television address last night explaining his decision. It would impose "impossible conditions" on American commanders. " It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you start withdrawing," he added.

The Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill had sent the bill to the White House yesterday on the fourth anniversary of Mr Bush's now-notorious appearance on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, in which he proclaimed " major combat operations" were over, beneath a banner reading: " Mission Accomplished".

Instead, the country is trapped in a war seemingly without end, in which some 3,350 US servicemen have died, and whose cost is $400bn and rising. Last month 104 were killed, making April the deadliest month of 2007 and the sixth deadliest since the war began in March 2003. Mr Bush's approval ratings, around 70 per cent then, have sunk to barely half that level today.

After more than four years of a failed policy, "it is time for Iraq to take responsibility for its own future", said Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate.