President Bush will meet with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders at the White House today after vetoing a war funding bill Tuesday evening because it set “a rigid and artificial deadline” for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
“It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing,” Bush said. “All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq.”
“Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible,” he said.
The president warned that a deadline “would dictate the terms on which the remaining commanders and troops could engage the enemy.”
“This is a prescription for chaos and confusion, and we must not impose it on our troops,” Bush said.
Bush said the troops were carrying out a new strategy under a new commander, Gen. David Petraeus. “Congress ought to give General Petraeus’s plan a chance to work,” he said.
“Without a war funding bill, the military has to take money from some other account or training program so the troops in combat have what they need,” he said.
Bush made his remarks after returning to the White House from Florida. In a speech to the U.S. Central Command, the president compared the conflict in Iraq with the Cold War.
“We emerged from that struggle with a Europe that is now whole and free and at peace,” he said. “I believe that one day future generations will look back at this time in the same way.”
Democrats waited until Tuesday to send Bush the bill because it was the fourth anniversary of the speech that the president gave under a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier.
“We are still in a war where more than 100 American service members have died in just the month of April,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D–Ill., who is running for president. “It is time to end this war so we can bring our troops home.”
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also is running for president, called Bush’s 2003 speech “one of the most shameful episodes in American history.”
“Never before in our history has a president said ‘mission accomplished’ when the mission had barely begun,” the New York Democrat said.
