Bush, Congress reach for war's reins

Petraeus stands for the view that "weapons are a means to an end, but the end is to shape politics," he says. "After the Rumsfeld era, we've rediscovered that the technocentric view of war – that saw human conflict as an engineering problem – is wrong."

Whether Petraeus can shift hearts and minds on Capitol Hill is not yet clear. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say that the vote count, as it stands, is not sufficient to override a presidential veto. But a veto also doesn't get the president the funding he needs to conduct the war.

In a vote to test House sentiment in a standoff with the president, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R) of California on April 19 proposed that House conferees insist on maintaining a mandatory withdrawal date in the final defense spending bill. The motion, which passed 215-199, was supported by only one Republican and lost nine Democratic votes. A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate is needed to overturn a presidential veto. But a veto also doesn't get the president the funding he needs to conduct the war.

Republican negotiators declined to offer even one amendment to the proposed emergency spending bill on Monday, citing the need to get on to post-veto negotiations.

"We are not generals. We are not the secretary of state. And we are most certainly not the commander in chief," said Representative Lewis, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. "We all know this bill is going nowhere fast. Let us quickly conclude this process."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky says that a mandate to withdraw troops no later than Oct. 1, no matter how well the Iraqi government meets its benchmarks or US troops are succeeding in the field, "sends absolutely the wrong message to al Qaeda, our allies in the region, and our forces in the field."

But many congressional experts see this week's confrontation over war funding as a critical test for a Congress that has long deferred to the White House over the conduct of the war.

"The Democrats are not micromanaging; they're macromanaging. They're not trying to direct tactical units. They're trying to influence the general direction of the war," says Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information.

"Congress has a right to do what it's doing. We still have civilian supremacy in this country, which still includes Congress," says Louis Fisher, an expert on presidential war powers at the Library of Congress.

On Tuesday, Bush addressed the showdown with Congress over Iraq war funding at the White House.

"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 judgment of our military commanders."

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