Also, go Dems!

[grysar]

The House passed a bill with a September 2008 deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. The Senate part will be tougher because it's a razor thin majority.

Bush has threatened to veto. He's probably not bluffing. The question is, how strong of a conference bill can we pass? I'm guessing that the House version will have to be watered down and/or porked up more, but still can probably be too strong for the President to sign.

The Republicans in Congress aren't breaking yet, so there's a limit to how much we can ram down the administrations throat. I'm also not sure if we can pull the equivalent of a continuing resolution. That's probably not worth it over a supplement battle.

Instead, the second bill will probably still have some tough provisions that Bush thinks he can sign and then safely ignore. Not sure what that will be, a lot will depend on the negotiators we use. This is a multi-round fight but I think we're setting up a stronger position for the next round.

Main downside, no provisions on Iran. For those of you that haven't seen it, they've captured 15 British sailors. It sounds like the Brits are going to be able to resolve that one, but this is the sort of incident that could escalate.

Comments

[schneeble.livejournal.com]

Regarding Iran, British sailors, escalation:

My understanding is that the government of Iran has announced that it intends to indict the sailors as spies, in violation of the oft-quoted Geneva Conventions. Maybe there's been more news on that front (I don't really follow events over the weekend), but given the amount of political and media flak we've taken for being in the gray area in Gitmo, I'm surprised that this event isn't bigger news.

Maybe they've rescinded that part of their announcement?

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard that, but then I haven't been following this quite as closely as I should. On the upside, this is a completely clear case regarding Geneva protections. The sailors were in uniform, not using civilian shields, or anything like that. Potentially dicer would be spec. op forces that were actually spying. Those forces, much like insurgents that don't fight in uniform, are more vulnerable to status hearings and the like.

The Post article from today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600191.html) doesn't mention the spy thing.

I think the main reason Iran hasn't caught more flak is that in comparison to past actions (embassey hostages) this isn't yet particularly egregious. Also, do note that the Security Council just adopted tougher sanctions on Iran, so it's safe to say that their international standing is none-to-high at the moment.

[grysar.livejournal.com]

The article does mention interogations, in and of themselves. However, for the moment we don't know how bad those are. I think lack of prominence in that aspect may largely be a matter of lack of information.