Democrats to revive Iraq war timetables

Story Highlights

• Fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill to include withdrawal date, Reid says
• Second approach would cut off funding for the war in April 2008
• Debate will begin before end of June, majority leader says
• Another proposal would mandate down time between deployments

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Democrats will once again try to impose timetables for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday.

Reid said Democrats will use a defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 as a vehicle to revive two Iraq timetable amendments that they pushed unsuccessfully during a fight over Iraq funding in May.

The first, sponsored by Reid and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would set a goal of beginning the withdrawal of U.S. troops by April 2008, unless the Iraqi government demonstrated political and security progress. However, President Bush would have the power to waive that requirement.

The second, sponsored by Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, would go further and cut off funding for the Iraq war by next April, without giving the president any flexibility to extend the mission.

"On Iraq, we're going to hold the president's feet to the fire," Reid said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Reid said debate on the bill will begin June 27, giving senators the chance to begin work on the contentious issues before Congress' break for the Fourth of July holiday.

Reid also said Democrats will bring forward an amendment addressing the "readiness" of U.S. troops in Iraq. While the details of that proposal are still being worked out, he said, one possibility is a requirement that after being deployed in Iraq, U.S. troops return stateside for an amount of time that is at least equivalent to the length of their service overseas.

The majority leader told reporters that Democrats are also still working on the details of another amendment to address the congressional authorization for the war given to Bush back in 2003. Some Democrats critical of the president's handling of the war have been pushing to rescind that authorization.

On May 1, Bush vetoed a funding bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan because it contained a timetable to begin troop withdrawals, along the lines of the Reid-Levin plan. The president said the bill would have set "a date for failure" and amounted to substituting "the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military leaders."

After nearly a month of wrangling, Democrats in the House and Senate eventually relented and agreed to send the president a funding bill without any timetables -- a move that provoked anger among anti-war forces in their political base.