Senators Spar Over War Costs
Senate Republicans braced for a continued faceoff with Democrats trying to use a multibillion-dollar Pentagon funding bill to criticize President Bush's handling of Iraq and the war on terrorism.
Democrats have repeatedly criticized Mr. Bush for not aggressively seeking more international forces to police Iraq and help oversee its reconstruction as American soldiers continue to die in attacks from Iraqi resisters.
"Our men and women in uniform, doing courageous work, find themselves in a near shooting-gallery environment in Iraq, with very little contribution from allies and the world," Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said Tuesday.
Democrats prepared to use the $368.6 billion Pentagon bill to force debates Wednesday over issues ranging from the cost of the Iraq war to the detention of enemy combatants in the war against terrorism.
The measure represents a Defense Department budget increase of a little over 1 percent for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, not counting a $62.4 billion emergency spending bill passed earlier this year to cover the cost of war in Iraq.
Likewise, the 2004 bill does not include additional money to support the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which probably will be financed by another emergency spending bill.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is leading an effort to force the administration to immediately request additional money for the military operations in both nations.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., also wants the administration to turn over the names and nationalities of each individual held as an enemy combatant — and disclose whether the government will charge, repatriate or release each of them.
Republicans mustered a strong majority to turn back the Senate's most vocal critic of the war on Tuesday as he attempted to limit the deployment of National Guard and Reserve forces around the world.
The 64-31 vote killed a proposal by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to limit National Guard and Reserve overseas missions to six months, once a year.
The Defense Department reported last week that 204,100 Guard and Reserve forces were now mobilized to active duty.
Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who oversees the defense budget, said the deployments are already limited to 180 days, not including time spent preparing and returning from an operation.
But he and other Republicans acknowledged the pressures faced by those forces when they are deployed to repeated missions abroad and promised to study the problem.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week the Pentagon needs to reassess how it uses those forces and look at possibly shifting some of their duties to the regular armed forces.
"We ought to have on active duty the kinds of people that are going to be needed for longer-term chores, or tasks which are going to frequently come up," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We can't keep calling the same people up four, five, six times. It's just not right."
Iraq's U.S. administrator said Tuesday that American troops will need to remain in Iraq until a constitution and a democratic government are in place. The remarks by L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, marked the first time U.S. administrator linked the length of the mission to the political process.
American soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division, who fought the war and stayed to establish the peace, were told they will probably be brought home in September. Officials refused to make firm promises.
Those soldiers and their families had been led to believe the troops would return home once major fighting in Baghdad was over, but they have stayed while most other troops have been sent home.
The bill also blocks funds for the Terrorism Information Awareness program, a Bush surveillance initiative to cull records for evidence of terrorist activity. The administration said the provision will "deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism."