WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democratic hopes of getting US troops home from Iraq before 2009 are reeling from a string of demoralizing blows, inflicted after the White House cajoled wavering Republicans to close ranks.
By the Democratic script, September was to be the month when Republican backing for the war in Congress fractured, forcing President George W. Bush to pull most US troops out of the cauldron of Iraq.
But, as a defeat for the latest Senate anti-war bill underlined Friday, the story has been radically different, and there seems little prospect of a Democratic breakthrough until mid-2008 at the earliest.
A bill that would have mandated a withdrawal of most US combat troops within 90 days, and changed the mission to training Iraqi troops and battling terrorism, garnered only 47 votes Friday in the 100-seat chamber.
That suggested Democratic anti-war efforts were losing ground: a procedural vote on a similar motion in July got 52 votes.
"The question is, where do we go from here?" said Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate armed services committee.
Democrats have been outmaneuvered by a vigorous White House drive to use testimony last week by war commander General David Petraeus to head off a brewing Republican revolt.
Republicans like Senators John Warner, Arlen Specter, and Richard Lugar, who had expressed doubt about war strategy, finally, and after some personal agonizing, sided with the administration against the most important anti-war bill.
The measure, which failed by four votes on Wednesday, would have given troops leave periods equal to the length of combat deployments -- effectively limiting the number of forces available for deployment.
Warner, a lifetime advocate for the US military, decided after a personal briefing from top brass he could not support the amendment.
Pro-war Republicans, visibly relieved when the bill foundered, declared that a Republican revolt brewing all summer had receded.
"In June, people were running for the exits, because they though this thing was over," said Senator Lindsey Graham, an outspoken backer of Bush's strategy this year to "surge" troops by an additional 30,000 in hopes of establishing some security in the country.
The next big confrontation is likely to come over Petraeus's scheduled return to Washington in March, by which time a gradual troop withdrawal announced by Bush, to January's pre-surge level of around 130,000, will be under way.
And given the failure of latest Democratic anti-war efforts, and Bush's warning of a prolonged US role in Iraq, it seems all but certain that well over 100,000 US troops will remain deployed in Iraq on election day in November 2008, when the Democrats hope to take control of the White House.
Therefore, any seismic shift on Iraq policy is likely only to come under a new president and reconstituted Congress, which take office in January 2009.
Republican war critic Senator Chuck Hagel said this week no holes would appear in the protective Republican ring around Bush this year.
"I don't think there will be any change of votes, vote switching until next year," Hagel said.
Democrats have repeatedly failed to get a required 60-vote majority in the Senate to be able to push through any binding legislation to enforce troop withdrawals.
By a generous count, they are also at least 10 votes short in the evenly balanced chamber of the 67 needed to override the presidential veto any such draft law is certain to attract.
Levin said Friday he would try this weekend to forge a compromise bill with moderate Republicans to urge a troop withdrawal, but by establishing a goal, rather than a binding end date, for its completion.
Past efforts to frame such language have failed -- simply because any compromise which attracts moderate Republicans has been deemed toothless by anti-war Democrats.
After repeated failures, the Democratic strategy seems now to be lining up Republicans to defend an unpopular war in the 2008 elections.
They are forcing Senate Republicans, 21 of whom have seats up for reelection next year, to cast repeated pro-war votes.
"This is Bush's war. Don't make it the Republican senators' war," Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid warned Tuesday.
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