Democrats blink first in battle to force US Iraq withdrawal

Divided Democrats have dropped a planned timetable for a US troop withdrawal from a new Iraq funding bill that President Bush had vowed to veto. But the legislation, to be sent to George Bush tomorrow, probably only postpones until September the moment of political reckoning on an ever more unpopular war, as the administration itself tries to plot a new course.

In the end, two factors made the Democrats blink. One was the arithmetical reality that the party did not have enough Republican support to put together the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, just as it had failed with an earlier funding bill that Mr Bush rejected on 1 May.

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The other, at least as potent, was the fear that if they continued to deny the money, they would be depicted by the White House as undermining the morale and safety of the troops on the ground - at a moment when US casualties are on the increase, and the current "surge", to which remaining hopes of a US "victory" are pinned, is at a critical stage.

As a result, the $120bn (£61bn) measure, agreed after intense negotiations with Republican leaders, is set to contain only benchmarks for political action by the Iraqi government, and a requirement for the Bush administration to deliver progress reports to Congress. If the Baghdad government falls short, it could face cuts in aid from Washington.

But the short-term funding fix was partly overshadowed yesterday by confirmation that the Pentagon and the State Department are close to finalising a new strategy "rewrite", that would focus at least as much on achieving political settlements between the rival factions in the civil war in Iraq as on the current US-led military drive against insurgents.

According to officials, the new plan will be finalised by 31 May. It is implicit recognition that the increase in total US forces in Iraq to 165,000, announced by President Bush in January, cannot be sustained indefinitely, given the growing hostility to the war among Republicans as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The new funding bill has laid bare the rift in Democratic ranks, and the dismay of anti-war liberals who argue that the party's sweeping victory in November's midterm elections was a protest against the war. The amended legislation amounted to a failure by Democrats to keep their bargain with voters, these latter say.

In a sign of the tensions, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker, who had played a key part in the negotiations, said she personally would oppose the timetable-less bill. "I'm not likely to vote for something that doesn't have a timetable," she told reporters.

Another leading anti-war liberal, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, complained that a "desire for political comfort won out over real action". In fact, the de facto deadline has merely been shifted to the end of September, when the new bill expires. At that point, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, has indicated, it will be becoming clear whether the "surge" is working. If it is not, a growing number of Republicans in the House and Senate have indicated they will reassess their positions, and some form of timeline for a US withdrawal will become harder than ever for the President to resist.

Mr Bush made a new defence of the war yesterday, by presenting new evidence that Osama bin Laden was working to set up an al-Qa'ida unit in Iraq to organise terrorist attacks in the US. By Mr Bush's account, in a graduation speech at the US Coast Guard Academy, the al-Qa'ida leader made that request in 2005 to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his former commander in Iraq.

The President argued the stakes in the Iraq war were higher than in the failed US entanglement in Vietnam. In Vietnam, the enemy did not have the wish or the capacity to strike the US itself. In Iraq, the enemy had both.

Hillary Clinton, frontrunner for the Democratic 2008 presidential nomination, called on the Pentagon to provide details of its contingency plans for a US withdrawal from Iraq, a subject that the White House is desperate not to discuss.