Bush, Congress reach for war's reins

The showdown this week between President Bush and Congress on war funding is a constitutional issue over who controls the military.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 25, 2007 edition

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Washington - In a move that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have anticipated for weeks, Congress and President Bush are heading into their first direct confrontation over funding the Iraq war.

At stake is $124.2 billion in emergency spending, including more than $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without that funding, the Pentagon says it will run out of money to pay for the war by the end of June.

Congress proposes linking war funding to diplomatic and security benchmarks that trigger deadlines for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, to begin as early as July 1. If Mr. Bush certifies that these benchmarks are being met, the plan requires the withdrawal of US combat forces to begin Oct. 1, with a target date to complete the pullout by April 1, 2008. Bush says he will veto the bill.

In this heated atmosphere, Wednesday's briefing by Gen. David Petraeus on Capitol Hill could not be more timely.

At the heart of the dispute is a tension locked into the Constitution over who directs a war. As commander in chief, Bush says that he and generals on the ground determine the deployment of US forces, not members of Congress.

"I believe strongly that politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their jobs," he said, after a meeting with Gen. Petraeus, who oversees all US forces in Iraq.

Democrats say that Congress must use its war-funding powers to force the president to change course on a war that most Americans no longer support.

In the sharpest exchange to date, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D), once a supporter of the Iraq war, said that he believed that Bush is "in a state of denial" over the "hard facts" of the war. At a critical point in the Iraq war and the Iraq debate at home, Congress is set to "put some spine in our policy," he said.

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