Bush set to veto Iraq bill, address nation

Bush set to veto Iraq bill, address nation
President's statement today will be televised live

Moving toward a veto of a war spending bill, President Bush said Tuesday that Democrats who made the legislation a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops could turn Iraq into a "cauldron of chaos" with their approach.

"Success in Iraq is critical to the security of free people everywhere," Bush said at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, including Iraq.

The Democratic-led Congress was holding a ceremony Tuesday afternoon to send the bill to the president, and he planned to veto it soon thereafter.

The White House said Bush would veto the bill on his return to the White House and then go before television cameras at 6:10 p.m. EDT, just before the evening news shows, to make a statement, coincidentally on the fourth anniversary of his so-called Mission Accomplished speech.

On Wednesday, Bush is scheduled to meet at the White House with bipartisan congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to begin discussing follow-up spending legislation.

Reid accused Bush of putting American troops "in the middle of a civil war" in Iraq, according to prepared remarks that he planned to deliver during the Tuesday ceremony.

"After more than four years of a failed policy, it's time for Iraq to take responsibility for its future," Reid said. "Today we renew our call to President Bush: There is still time to listen. There is still time to sign this bill and change course in Iraq."

Without enough votes to override Bush's veto, Democrats are considering revisions to the bill that will fund the troop but not give the president a blank check. A likely option is demanding the Iraqi government meet benchmarks for progress.

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But less clear is what consequences the Iraqis would face if they failed to meet the standards. Democrats want to pull out U.S. troops if the Iraqis fall behind, but such a measure would trigger a second veto. Some Republicans say they would support tying benchmarks to the more than $5 billion provided to Iraq in foreign aid, but nothing that would tie the hands of military commanders.

"House Republicans will oppose any bill that includes provisions that undermine our troops and their mission, whether it's benchmarks for failure, arbitrary readiness standards, or a timetable for American surrender," said Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Republican Whip Roy Blunt said he thinks the rank-and-file GOP will agree. "Our members will not accept restraint on the military," said Blunt, R-Mo.

The president did not explicitly mention the war funding legislation. But he made clear indirectly how he feels about its requirement that troops begin to be withdrawn by Oct. 1, and defending his policy of not only keeping troops in Iraq, but increasing their numbers.

Bush said that pulling the American presence from Baghdad before Iraqis are capable of defending themselves would have disastrous results — giving al-Qaida terrorists a safe haven from which to operate and an inspiration for new recruits and new attacks.

"Withdrawal would have increased the probability that coalition troops would be forced to return to Iraq one day and confront an enemy that is even more dangerous," he said in remarks to representatives from countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. "Failure in Iraq should be unacceptable to the civilized world."

Bush's appearance came exactly four years after his speech on an aircraft carrier decorated with a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner. In that address, a frequent target of Democrats seeking to ridicule the president, he declared that the Iraq front in the global fight against terrorism had been successfully completed.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," the president said from the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, just weeks after the war began. "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

The White House has argued that Bush was only talking about the initial toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, and that he never meant to imply that all fighting was over in Iraq.

At the time, Bush's approval rating was 63 percent, with the public's disapproval at 34 percent.

Four years later, with over 3,300 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and the country gripped by unrelenting violence and political uncertainty, only 35 percent of the public approves of the job the president is doing, while 62 percent disapprove, according to an April 2-4 poll from AP-Ipsos.

White House press secretary Dana Perino accused Democrats of using U.S. troops as pawns in political games by waiting to send the funding bill to the president on the anniversary.

"It's a trumped-up political stunt that is the height of cynicism," she said.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker acknowledged Tuesday that there "is something of an al-Qaida surge going on" in Iraq, with the group using suicide car bombs as its principle weapons, but he said that doesn't mean the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to secure isn't working.

"We're just fighting at a number of levels here against a number of different enemies," Crocker told reporters during a videoconference from Baghdad.