USA: Bush stresses he will veto any Democrat bill that ties congressional funding of U.S. troops in Iraq to a withdrawal timetable

President Bush is standing firm behind his position to veto the latest bill taking shape in Congress. Bush said on Tuesday (April 24) that any bill calling for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is a recipe for failure. "I'm disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course," Bush said. "They chose to make a political statement," he said. "That's their right but it is wrong for our troops and it's wrong for our country. To accept the bill proposed by the Democratic leadership would be to accept a policy that directly contradicts the judgement of our military commanders." House and Senate Democratic appropriators agreed on Monday (April 23) on a 124 billion U.S. dollars Bill that would fund the Iraq war but order troops to begin leaving by October 1 with the goal of completing the pullout six months later. Democrats would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto. Democrats said they won't back down and pointed to past remarks by Gen. David Petraeus, the new Iraq commander, that security in Iraq requires a political solution. Bush said U.S. troops should not be caught in the middle of a showdown between the White House and Congress. "Yesterday, Democratic leaders announced that they planned to send me a bill that will fund our troops only if we agree to handcuff our generals, add billions of dollars of unrelated spending and begin to pull out of Iraq by an arbitrary date," Bush said in the Rose Garden. He said the bill would mandate the withdrawal of U.S. troops beginning as early as July 1 and no later than October 1, despite the fact that Petraeus has not yet received all the reinforcements he has said he needs to help secure Baghdad and the troubled Anbar Province. "The American people did not vote for failure," he said. "That is precisely what the Democratic leadership's bill would guarantee. It's not too late for Congress to do the right thing." At least 86 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq this month, making April the deadliest since December, when 112 were killed. At least 3,333 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

ITN Source | April 25, 2007

Tags:. .december. .troubled. .spending. .policy. .wrong