He doesn’t. He chokes on pretzels sitting on the couch.
Bush just gave a speech calling on Congress to hurry up and pass the bill so he can veto it, “and then we can get down to the business of funding the troops with no strings.”
He didn’t say what he’ll do if Congress won’t fund the troops with no strings.
According to CNN, the funds now available won’t run out until mid-July.
Quite personally, I think Iraqis and terrorists are aligned in kicking our (U.S.A.'s) infidel asses out of their country. Once we are out, Iraq will not tolerate these murderers in thier country. Just my opinion though.
Whoever spins it right, whomever the public/media quotes first.
But, from the sound of Bush’s comment, I would assume Republicans in Congress would try to write a new funding bill and get it shot down by the Dems. I’m no govt expert, would that be possible?
Well, the House and Senate have finally agreed on a funding bill. Now it’s W’s to sign or veto – and he ain’t budging.
Perhaps this is the best that the Dems can be expected to do, but it’s not a bill that gets us out of Iraq. It sets a “goal” to end combat operations by Mar '08, but has all kinds of loop holes about fighting al Qaeda and such. Bush could sign this bill and continue on his merry way pretty much unimpeded.
The odd thing about the bill is the two dates for beginning to withdraw troops. One date if certain benchmarks are met and another date if they’re not (and I think the 2 dates are only 6 months apart). If we’re going to bug out, WTF difference does it make? Just set the earlier date and be done with it. Strange are the ways of the legislative process…
I thought the same thing reading about the bill. The loopholes with regards to the Iraqi government meeting certain benchmarks seem like they would leave Bush free to sign the bill and still keep moving the goalposts for withdrawal as long as he’s in office. I don’t think signing the bill would hurt him much at all and would probably even help him politically if it looked like he was willing to compromise with the Dems.
I think there’s just something in his makeup, though, that won’t allow him even to appear that he’s conceding anything. He just refuses to lose any kind of pissing contest with the Dems, no matter how self-destructive his stance may become.
But that’s the weird thing about Bush-- he’s willing to take any amount of political heat in order to continue his adventure. And because of that, he has no motivation to sign the bill unless he gets exactly what he wants. The Dems have already signaled that they will resubmit a bill w/o the timelines if he vetoes this bill. From Reuters
Maybe (some of) the Dems just want to get a veto on record and will be satisfied with that.
As for the loopholes, I was actually thinking of the parts that allow him to fight al Qaeda, keep training the Iraqi military, etc. I get a sense that he could keep most, if not all, the forces there under the guise of “approved” activities. He’s really only got a a little more than 18 months left.
And I don’t see either Hillary or Obama saying that would pull all of our military out of Iraq if they were president (especially Hillary). Whenever you read the fine print, there are always exceptions for this and exceptions for that. (Not that either of those two would be as bad as Bush, but let’s just make sure we understand what we’re stuck with wrt the Iraq situation.)
That’s what happens when you’re certain you’re right.
That has a rather perilous downside. If they give in after Bush’s veto, it will look like the whole thing was just a bit of Beltway kabuki. Or, in Bush’s words, a political statement.
If Bush hadn’t accused them of doing that, they could have afforded to cave. Now they really can’t, without displaying in plain sight that they’re still not a party with solid convictions.
Four and a fraction days shy of 21 months, unfortunately. 635 days, 15 hours and about 35 minutes, but who’s counting? 
But Bush has the advantage since he’s got so many people (ie, Congresscritters) whose will he can try and shake. When it comes down to the wire, I think the Dems will have to cave. They may seem to be united on the surface, but they’re all over the map on this, as the article I linked to would indicate.
Of course, he could just sign the damn thing and issue a signing statement saying he will comply with the timelines only to the extent that they don’t infringe on his Constitutional authority as CiC.
Imagine a time when there are no Bush related threads in either GD or the Pit!
Be assured, he will haunt this board for some time to come as a ghostly presence, more prominent and frequently sighted than Clinton’s or Nixon’s . . .
Here’s a hint, pal: The President of the United States, his/her policies and actions and even personal characteristics, are ALWAYS going to dominate political discourse, and not only in the United States, either. ALWAYS. Better learn to deal with it.
If the next one is a fuckup too, the next one will bashed here too. Would you really *prefer * it any other way?
I doubt it. Clinton and Nixon pop in threads all the time, but very rarely as the subject of the thread. That’s what I was talking about.
It doesn’t matter if 100% of the U.S. population wants us out of Iraq ASAP. In our democratic republic they’re spectators to those in power, not active participants. Bush, the GOP, and the pro-war Dems (i.e. most of them) will make sure those enduring bases don’t go to waste.
Now, we may reduce our presence there before the 2008 elections by 50% or so but we’re not going to completely pull out and we’re certainly not going to pull out in such a way where the Dems could get any positive political credit for it. No matter what happens the Dems will lose in the public arena. We all know how how this works. The GOP will come out with some great lies, some great talking points which will be played verbatim in all the major media. There will be a couple of distractions here and there to seal the deal (I hear the gay mexican terrorists are invading Texas!) and it won’t be a problem by Nov. 2008.
The key thing to remember is we don’t drop that much cash on those sort of advanced bases and just leave. Ask the people who live by our other 900 something bases.
Why not just save face by handing over those bases to the Iraqi Army? We can cite it as one more thing we’re doing to help them “stand up.”
My guess is that there is a desire among a lot of those in government to be able to protect “American interests” in the region.
No doubt, which is why the bases were built in the first place. But by now it should be obvious even to them that using Iraq as a “coaling station” – a permanent safe haven for projection of American military power throughout the MENA (the role the Philippines once played WRT Southeast Asia and the Pacific) – is just not in the cards. However things shape up in Iraq, American GIs will never be safe there. On that score, it’s high time to cut our losses.
Perhaps you should write your Congressman about that.
Oh, it’s a pretty tenuous coalition, alright. But there’s nothing like the possibility of embarrassment to add a new shot of political will.
He could, but I doubt he’d be willing to give the Dems even that much of a moral victory.
What I’d hope for in this situation, post-veto, is for the Dems to fully fund Afghanistan, pass a 60 to 90 day extension of the Iraq funding, then repeat the whole thing in 2-3 months. Wavering Dems will increasingly realize that the voters aren’t going to turn on them for opposing the war, and vulnerable Republicans (Collins, Sununu, etc.) will increasingly feel the heat. By summer’s end, the Dems’ majority won’t be nearly so fragile.
If Bush and Cheney resigned tomorrow, and we had President Pelosi for the next 21 months, it would take most of that time just to bring to light everything that they’d been up to, these past six years. And Roberts and Alito will be on the Supreme Court for decades. The Pitting won’t go away overnight, nor should it.