Senate rejects Iraq withdrawal

Senate Democrats yesterday failed to get enough votes for a bill to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by next March, the first test of new Democratic leaders who will spend the next weeks challenging President Bush’s war strategy.

Senators rejected on a near party-line 50-48 vote the proposal by Majority Leader Harry Reid that called for troops to start leaving Iraq in four months.

Only one Republican — Sen. Gordon H. Smith of Oregon — backed the proposal. Just two Democrats — Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas — joined Democrat-leaning independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut in opposing it. Two senators — Democrat Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Republican John McCain of Arizona — did not vote.

Earlier, on the other side of the Capitol, a Democratic war-spending plan cleared its first hurdle yesterday in the House Appropriations Committee, setting the stage for a floor battle next week. That measure, which passed on a mostly party-line vote, puts a framework to withdraw U.S. troops by September 2008 as a condition on a $124 billion supplemental appropriation bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leaders from both parties hailed the Senate vote as a victory.

“We’ve had a very good day for the Democrats,” Mr. Reid said.

Five minutes later, Republicans came to the microphones with a similar message.

“I think this is a good day,” Republican Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi said.

“Well obviously I’m very pleased,” agreed Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

Democrats said they did not look at the Senate vote as a failure, and pointed out they picked up votes since June, when the Senate voted 60-39 against a nonbinding Democratic resolution calling for the start of troop withdrawal.

“We’re going to continue to pick up steam, because we’re going to continue to make the case that the current course is not successful, and that the way to succeed in Iraq is to change the direction of Iraqi policy and to focus on the Iraqi leaders, putting pressure on them to achieve a political settlement of their differences,” said Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who wrote the withdrawal measure last summer.

Mr. Reid called the day’s events “a process of working every step of the way to bring our troops home.”

Mr. Bush had threatened to veto the Senate bill, which would have required 60 votes to pass but could not muster even a majority.

In a speech last night to the National Republican Congressional Committee, Mr. Bush praised the Senate for having “wisely rejected a resolution that would have placed an artificial timetable on our mission in Iraq.”

He also warned the House against using the war-spending bill “as an opportunity to micromanage our military commanders, or to force a precipitous withdrawal in Iraq, or threaten vital funding for Iraqi security forces, and fund projects that have nothing to do with the war on terror.”

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