House GOP Seeks Quick Vote on Iraq Pullout
Nov 18, 5:07 PM (ET)
By LIZ SIDOTI
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans, seeing an opportunity, maneuvered for a quick vote and swift rejection Friday of a Democratic lawmaker's call for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.
"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "We will not retreat."
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California had no immediate reaction to the idea of a quick vote before Congress leaves Washington for two weeks.
GOP leaders decided to act little more than 24 hours after Rep. John Murtha, a hawkish Democrat with close ties to the military, said the time had come to pull out the troops.
By forcing the issue to a vote, Republicans placed many Democrats in a politically unappealing position - whether to side with Murtha and expose themselves to attacks from the White House and congressional Republicans, or whether to oppose him and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.
Murtha offered a resolution that would force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq "at the earliest practicable date." It would establish a quick-reaction force and a nearby presence of Marines in the region.
House Republicans planned to put to a vote - and reject - their own resolution that simply says: "It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."
Most Republicans oppose Murtha's plan, and some Democrats also have been reluctant to back his position.
Some members of the House and Senate, looking ahead to off-year elections next November, are publicly worrying about a quagmire in Iraq. They have been staking out new positions on a war that has grown increasingly unpopular with the American public, resulted in more than 2,000 U.S. military deaths and cost more than $200 billion.
(AP) Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., faces reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington Friday, Nov. 18, 2005,...
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The House move comes just days after the GOP-controlled Senate defeated a Democratic push for Bush to lay out a timetable for withdrawal. Spotlighting questions from both parties about the war, though, the chamber then approved a statement that 2006 should be a significant year in which conditions are created for the phased withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency," Murtha said Thursday. "They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."
A day after his comments, a U.S. field commander in Iraq countered the position of the congressman who usually backs the Pentagon.
"Here on the ground, our job is not done," said Col. James Brown, commander of the 56th Brigade Combat Team, when asked about Murtha's comments during a weekly briefing that American field commanders give to Pentagon reporters.
Speaking from a U.S. logistics base at Balad, north of Baghdad, two days before his scheduled return to Texas, Brown said: "We have to finish the job that we began here. It's important for the security of this nation."
(AP) Senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., hold a news conference on pre-Iraq War...
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Republicans chastised Murtha for advocating what they called a strategy of surrender and abandonment. Democrats defended him as a patriot, even as many declined to back his view.
"I won't stand for the swift-boating of Jack Murtha," said Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. Also a Vietnam veteran, Kerry was dogged during the campaign by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who challenged his war record.
"There is no sterner stuff than the backbone and courage that defines Jack Murtha's character and conscience," Kerry said.
For his part, Kerry has proposed a phased exit from Iraq, starting with the withdrawal of 20,000 troops after December elections in Iraq. A Kerry spokesman said "he has his own plan" when asked if Kerry agreed with immediate withdrawal.
As a Vietnam veteran and top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Murtha carries more credibility with his colleagues on the issue than a number of other Democrats who have opposed the war from the start.
Bush administration officials have been cautious in responding to him.
"We have nothing but respect for Congressman Murtha's service to his country," White House communications director Nicolle Wallace told NBC's "Today" show Friday. "And I think he spoke from the heart yesterday. We happen to have a real serious policy disagreement with him."
Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, a 29-year Air Force veteran who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for nearly seven years, called Murtha's position unconscionable and irresponsible. "We've got to support our troops to the hilt and see this mission through," he said.
With a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, Murtha retired from the Marine Corps reserves as a colonel in 1990 after 37 years as a Marine, only a few years longer than he's been in Congress. Elected in 1974, Murtha has become known as an authority on national security whose advice was sought out by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
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