Senate Juggles Words, Preps to Rebuke Bush

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 1, 2007 — -- President Bush may have his proposal for increased U.S. troop levels in Iraq harshly rebuked by the U.S. Senate on Monday, thanks to the efforts of one of his party's senior statesmen on military issues, Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

Warner -- a former Marine who fought in the Korean War, a former secretary of the Navy, and the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- cobbled together a compromise bill that may win a bipartisan majority next week, providing senators an official opportunity to comment on the administration's handling of the war.

Late Wednesday night, Warner announced that he and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had joined forces to express opposition to the Iraq troop surge.

Levin had been an original co-sponsor of a more strongly worded resolution expressing opposition to the surge, written with Sens. Joe Biden, D-Del., Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

By Thursday, Biden, Hagel, and Snowe had all thrown their support behind the rewritten Warner bill, which threatens to deliver a sharp referendum to the White House. Their nonbinding resolution also pledges to protect funding for troops already serving and calls for benchmarks to measure the progress of the Iraqi government.

"If the president does not listen to the majority of the Congress," said Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "we will have to look for other ways to change his policy. But this is a very important first step."

Known as the Warner-Levin compromise, it has already found opposition in the Senate.

Late Thursday afternoon, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., implied that its supporters are intellectually dishonest and said the nonbinding resolution promises to "insert failure" in Iraq.

Joined by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., McCain announced a resolution markedly different than the snowballing Warner-Levin bill, which has the support of at least five Republicans and most Senate Democrats.