White House Will Fight For War Powers

The White House said Friday it would oppose any attempt by Senate Democrats to revoke the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the war in Iraq and to restrict U.S. troops to a limited mission as they prepared to withdraw.

The Bush administration argued that changes in the resolution were unnecessary even though it was drafted in the days when Saddam Hussein was in power and there was an assumption — later proved false — that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The White House said Democrats were in a state of confusion about Iraq.

"There's a lot of ... shifting sands in the Democrats' position right now," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said. "It's hard to say exactly what their position is."

Earlier in the day, the same White House spokesperson had said that any effort by Congress to revoke the president's authority to wage war in Iraq was hypothetical, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller, but as the day progressed, so did the message.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said of the White House, "They can spin all they want, but the fact is that President Bush is ignoring a bipartisan majority of Congress, his own military commanders and the American public in escalating the war.

"The American people have demanded a change of course in Iraq and Democrats are committed to holding President Bush accountable," Manley said.

Democrats want a narrower mission, reports CBS White House correspondent Jim Axelrod: denying terrorists a safe haven in Iraq and training Iraqi troops to secure their country. The Democrats say that would require fewer U.S. troops, and drawdown of troops could start early next year.

Democrats such as Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, say this is the best chance for their party to oppose the war but avoid divisive arguments on supporting the troops.

"There are very formidable challenges in keeping the Democrats together on this," he said. "Anything that suggests you're undercutting the troops will not come close to getting majority."

But Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader, dismissed the Democrats' effort as a "Goldilocks solution, one that is hot enough for the radical left wing but cool enough for the party leaders who claim that they are for the troops." He said he would press for a Senate vote on a resolution committing to funding the troops.

The White House spokesman said Congress does have the power of the purse to control U.S. troops in Iraq, Knoller reports, but the president has all the constitutional authority he needs as commander in chief to determine strategy.

Axelrod reports that the president's aides argue that Congress authorized the president to send troops to Iraq in 2002 to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions. Since those resolutions are still in force, they say no new authorization is needed.

The wording of the Democrats' measure remains unsettled. One version would restrict American troops in Iraq to fighting the al Qaeda terrorist network, training Iraqi Army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

Reid intends to present the proposal to fellow Democrats next week, and he is expected to try to add the measure to anti-terrorism legislation. Officials who described the strategy spoke only on condition of anonymity, noting that rank-and-file senators had not yet been briefed on the details.

"These kinds of efforts have consequences," Fratto said at the White House on Friday. He said that pulling troops out of Baghdad would result in chaos.

Republicans recently thwarted two Democratic attempts to pass a nonbinding measure through the Senate that was critical of Mr. Bush's decision to deploy an additional 21,500 combat troops.

After failing on his second attempt last Saturday, Reid said he would turn his attention to passing binding legislation.

Any attempt to limit President Bush's powers as commander in chief probably would face strong opposition from Republican allies of the administration in the Senate. Additionally, it could also face a veto threat.

The issue marks a quickening of the challenge Democrats are mounting to Mr. Bush's war policies following November elections in which voters swept Republicans from power in both the House and Senate.

The emerging Senate plan differs markedly from an approach favored by critics of the war in the House of Representatives, where a nonbinding measure passed last week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she expects the next challenge to the president's war policies to come in the form of legislation requiring the Defense Department to adhere to strict training and readiness standards for troops ticketed for the war zone.

Rep. John Murtha, the leading Democratic advocate of that approach, has said it would effectively deny Mr. Bush the ability to proceed with the troop buildup that has been partially implemented since he announced it in January.

Some Senate Democrats have been privately critical of that approach, saying it would have virtually no chance of passing and could easily backfire politically in the face of Republican arguments that it would deny reinforcements to troops already in the war zone.

Several Senate Democrats have called in recent days for revoking the original authorization that Bush sought and won from Congress in the months before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.