White House Week
New Year's Resolutions Very Likely to Be Ignored
After weeks of jockeying and backroom deals and strong-arming, Congress hopes to finally get down this week to debating President Bush's contentious Iraq plan on the floor of the Senate. Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner's language for a nonbinding resolution on the plan has the broadest support. But the Senate is still very much split. Warner's plan would oppose the increase of 21,500 troops and urge Bush to consider alternatives. Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold and Chris Dodd say that doesn't have enough bite; Sens. John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, support Bush's plan but want specific benchmarks. As for the House, it's holding off to see what happens in the Senate first: At week's end, Republicans were threatening a filibuster.
Rediscovering the Power of the Purse
Looking past the nonbinding resolutions, antiwar Democrats are planning their next steps toward stopping the Iraq war. The plan is to use the budget process that begins this week to make the administration pay for the war through regular appropriations and not through supplemental spending requests-later add-ons that the Democrats view as a blank check. One Democratic strategist says this will force the administration to "come up with real numbers on what the war is going to cost and allow for real debate" on whether it's worth the expense.
Never Too Soon to Turn Up the Heat
A decision by the Democratic National Committee to have its research team focus on potential GOP presidential candidates way back in 2005 is already showing results. The opposition team gets credit, for example, for raising doubts about Sen. John McCain's ties to conservatives and the abortion and gay marriage positions of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The team now wants to remind voters about Rudy Giuliani's problems in New York prior to 9/11, and it has begun to focus on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his "messy exit from office." It has also started to dub the candidates: McCain is the "Double-Talk Express," and Romney is the "Smooth-Talking Mitt."
Spooks Weigh In With Doom and Gloom
For the past several weeks, the U.S. military has moved against Iranian targets in Iraq, while Washington has condemned Tehran's provision of training and weapons to Shiite militias. But a new National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus judgment of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, says that the involvement of Iran (and to a lesser degree Syria) "is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics." In other words, stopping Iran's support to the militias will have little effect on the sectarian violence. So why the push against Tehran? Iran's support does help the militias target U.S. soldiers in Iraq using explosive devices designed to penetrate armored vehicles. Overall, the gloomy NIE warns that while a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would "almost certainly" lead to much higher levels of violence, prospects for political reconciliation in Iraq remain low, and Iraqi security forces would be "hard pressed" to take on significantly more security responsibilities.
PHOTO OP: 11:00 a.m., February 1, Capitol Hill
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (left) huddles with Sen. John Warner during the confirmation hearing for Gen. George Casey as Army chief of staff. Casey, who has been U.S. commander in Iraq, was forced to defend himself from some members' sharp criticism of his running of the Iraq war, but he is likely to get the new job.
With Silla Brush, Kenneth T. Walsh, Paul Bedard and Kevin Whitelaw
This story appears in the February 12, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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