Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

Here's the opinion of my business partner on the House's Iraq War Funding Bill

see "House OKs timetable for troops in Iraq", 3/23/07
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq

Yesterday, the US House of Representatives passed a binding war spending bill that included a timetable for mandatory pullout of our troops from Iraq. The vote was very close 216-212, split mostly across party lines. Two Republicans voted for the bill with the majority and 14 Democrats voted against the bill with the minority party. President Bush vowed to veto this bill if it was passed.

Given the seriousness of potential damage to our position in the Iraq war should a mandatory timetable for withdrawal be enacted, I wonder how the vote would have turned out if the President were not expected to veto it. In a way, I would like to see the President sign this bill just so that the resulting problems of things breaking down in Iraq after our armed forces are removed would get properly blamed on the anti-war left that is trying to design this very scenario. I suppose however, the media would likely spin the outcome to be a Republican error once again. And more importantly, we should leave it to the Democrats, not our President, to risk our national security to score political points and to waste even more money on pork. Better veto it.