Here are the numbers to keep in mind:

Number of Democrats in the House — 233
Number of votes needed to override a veto, if all members vote — 290
Number of Republican/Independent votes needed — 57

Number of Democrats in the Senate — 51
Number of votes needed to override a veto, if all members vote — 67
Number of Republican/Independent votes needed — 16

Of course, that’s assuming you get 100 percent of the Dems, which so far hasn’t happened on any of the Iraq votes in the House. In the Senate, Joe Lieberman is counted as a Dem to claim a Democratic majority and rights to committee chairs, but he votes with the Republicans regarding Iraq. He’s neither fish nor fowl, as they say. But we get Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on our side on Iraq, so let’s call it a wash.

The point is that in order to take the war away from President Bush a whole mess o’ Republicans must be persuaded to vote with the Dems — at least 67 House members and 16 senators, possibly more. But the only hope we have that troops will be deployed out of Iraq — indeed, that anything resembling a rational policy is applied to Iraq — before the Bush Administration ends is if there’s a big enough voting block to override a Bush veto. Even then Bush might well ignore the law, but let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

President Bush is expected to veto the Iraq Accountability Act early this week. It’s not clear to me what Congress might do next. Whatever happens, I expect the Dems to continue to butt heads with Bush over the war. The question is, when will more Republicans join them?

Doyle McManus writes for the Los Angeles Times that this Iraq War bill is only a prelude.

To buy time for his buildup of more than 28,000 troops to show results, Bush asked his commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, to deliver a progress report to the nation in early September.

That helped stave off Republican defections as Congress debated whether to impose a timetable for troop withdrawals. But it also established September as a deadline for clearer military and political progress in Iraq, a tactical concession for a White House that long has refused to accept any benchmarks or timetables for evaluating the war, now 4 years old.

Democratic and Republican members of Congress already are focusing on September as their next major decision point on the war — planning hearings to debate Petraeus’ findings and, in the Democrats’ case, promising new attempts to force Bush to withdraw troops.

By September, the troop buildup will have been underway for more than six months. Unless there is dramatic improvement in Iraq, public support for the war will probably have eroded further. And by September, skittish Republicans will be four months closer to starting their reelection campaigns.

At the moment, at least 17 Republican senators are expected to run for re-election in 2008. There are three more sitting Republican senators whose terms expire in 2009 but who might retire. Among those 20 are the two Republicans who voted with the Dems on the Iraq Accountability Act, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

And, of course, all members of the House face re-election in 2008.

Doyle McManus continues,

GOP leaders warn that they will need dramatic evidence of progress — something that has been in short supply in Iraq — to maintain support for the war.

“We need to get some better results from Iraq both politically, economically and militarily, and that needs to happen in the foreseeable future,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a Bush administration loyalist.

Several moderate Republicans have warned that they are preparing to switch sides unless the troop “surge” shows results.

“If the president’s new strategy does not demonstrate significant results by August, then Congress should consider all options — including a redefinition of our mission and a gradual but significant withdrawal of our troops next year,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who last week voted against the withdrawal bill.

Even the most optimistic of the generals do not expect significant results by August.

“There is a lot of frustration with the administration on the Republican side,” said one GOP House member who has voted against every Democratic measure on Iraq but asked not to be quoted by name to avoid angering the White House.

This tells us how sick our government has become. Even a congressman is afraid to speak on the record against the Regime. There cannot be a representative, democratic government if the peoples’ representatives are intimidated by the executive branch.

If Bush follows through on his veto threat, senior Democratic lawmakers have said they will pass an emergency funding bill that does not include the withdrawal timelines the president has complained so vociferously about.

Such a measure, however, almost certainly would include readiness standards for the strained military. It would also outline benchmarks the Iraqi government must meet to demonstrate progress in reconciling differences between the country’s sectarian communities.

The administration opposes benchmarks that would impose penalties on Iraq if it does not meet them on time.

“To begin now to tie our own hands and to say, ‘We must do this if they don’t do that,’ doesn’t allow us the flexibility and creativity that we need to move this forward,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

But benchmarks have gained support among Republicans who voice increasing frustration over the Iraqi government’s failure to complete long-promised political reforms: a new law apportioning the country’s oil revenue, a relaxation of rules banning members of the overthrown Baath Party from government jobs, and elections to set up provincial governments.

“We’ve got to get [more] aggressive on pushing the political solution,” Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a supporter of the war, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve got to push them very hard. And our timelines, I think, are very short…. I don’t know if [September] is the time to set, but I don’t think we have infinite time.”

I expected more Republicans to have broken with Bush by now. But I agree with McManus that the point of the “surge” was to buy time for the administration. Republicans facing reelection in 2008 may not want to run in the general election as supporters of the Iraq War, but neither do they want to alienate their right-wing base. And the base doesn’t want to hear anything about the war that doesn’t include the words winning and victory. So Republicans are boxed in. I fully expect Bush to trot out some other phony Iraq initiative when he comes back from the August vacation, in the hopes it will keep Republicans in Congress in line and buy him a few more months.

But Republicans running for reelection in 2008 do not have infinite time. If they can’t defuse Iraq as an issue before serious campaigning begins next year, it’s going to cost many of them their seats. Surely they know this.

I want to end the war in Iraq as quickly as possible. However, the big immovable object in the way of that goal is the POTUS. We can holler all we want about defunding the war or impeaching the POTUS, but the reality is that the only body with legal authority to kick Bush out of the way is Congress. And nothing meaningful will happen in Congress until at least 16 Republican senators and 57 Republican House members support it. IMO antiwar activists need to stop bellyaching about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and get to work on Republicans.

The following Republican incumbent senators must win reelection in 2008 if they hope to serve another term.* Not all of them will change their votes, so we’ll need a few Republican senators not on this list. I’m just saying these are the senators with the most reason to be nervous.

Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
Saxby Chambliss of Georgia
Thad Cochran of Mississippi
Norm Coleman of Minnesota
Susan Collins of Maine
John Cornyn of Texas
Larry Craig of Idaho
Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina
Pete Domenici of New Mexico
Michael Enzi of Wyoming
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska**
Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Pat Roberts of Kansas
Jeff Sessions of Alabama
Gordon Smith of Oregon**
Ted Stevens of Alaska
John Sununu of New Hampshire
John Warner of Virginia

*The term of Wayne Allard of Colorado is also ending, but he has announced his retirement.
** Already voting with the Dems.

The White House is making noises about rejecting legislation that requires the Iraqi government to meet benchmarks, even if there are no timetables. If Reid and Pelosi think they could patch together a veto-proof majority for such a bill, it might be worthwhile to pass it. Baby steps are better than no steps.

Update, sorta related: Maliki’s Office Is Seen Behind Purge in Forces.

Update2: William F. Buckley: “There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.”

The chief commander on the ground in Iraq is less than optimistic. Ewen MacAskill reports for The Guardian:

The top US commander in Iraq admitted yesterday that the conflict would “get harder before it gets easier”, providing further ammunition for Democrats determined to face down George Bush in their constitutional clash over the Iraq war.
Hours before the Senate passed legislation ordering troops to start leaving Iraq by October, General David Petraeus said the conflict was “the most complex and challenging I have ever seen”. Gen Petraeus, who was put in charge of the Baghdad troop “surge” to pacify the Iraqi capital, warned of the enormous commitment and sacrifice facing the US in Iraq.

His downbeat assessment, in contrast with Mr Bush’s optimistic statements, stiffened the resolve of Democrats in Congress pushing for an early withdrawal of US troops. Yesterday the Senate followed the House of Representatives in backing legislation that calls for most US troops to be out by spring 2008.

Did Gen Petraeus’s downbeat assessment appear in American news media? I don’t believe I’ve seen it.

Petraeus was in Washington this past week to brief senators and congressmen on the current situation on the ground in Iraq. He was supposed to be shoring up support for the war, but it seems he wasn’t entirely successful. David Sanger reports for the New York Times that even the White House seems more cautious.

The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.

That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.

Gen. Petraeus said of Mr. Malaki, “He’s not the Prime Minister Tony Blair of Iraq.” Make of that what you will.

Meanwhile, retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom says President Bush should sign the funding bill that Congress just passed. Kasie Hunt reports for the Associated Press (emphasis added):

“I hope the president seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill Congress has sent him,” Odom said, delivering the Democrats’ weekly radio address….

… The general accused Bush of squandering U.S. lives and helping Iran and al-Qaida when he invaded Iraq.

“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place,” he said. “The president has let (the Iraq war) proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. He lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies.”

Odom said he doesn’t favor congressional involvement in the execution of foreign and military policy, but argued that Bush had been derelict in his responsibilities. This week Congress passed an Iraq war spending bill that would require Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq on Oct. 1.

Gen. Odom was Director of the National Security Agency during the Reagan Administration, among other things.

Update: This is from Democrats.Senate.gov:

What Military Experts Are Saying about the Supplemental and the President’s Plan to Veto It

“This bill gives General Petraeus great leverage for moving the Iraqi government down the more disciplined path laid out by the Iraq Study Group. The real audience for the timeline language is Prime Minister al-Maliki and the elected government of Iraq. The argument that this bill aides the enemy is simply not mature – nobody on the earth underestimates the United States’ capacity for unpredictability. It may further create some sense of urgency in the rest of our government, beginning with the State Department.”

–Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, USA, Ret.

“The bill gives the president a chance to pull back from a disastrous course, re-orient US strategy to achieve regional stability, and win help from many other countries — the only way peace will eventually be achieved.”

–LT GEN Wm. E. Odom, USA, Ret.

“Supporting the Iraq Supplemental Bill not only reflects the thinking of the Iraq Study Group but puts teeth to the phrase “Supporting the Troops”. By establishing timelines it returns the responsibility of self preservation and regional sovereignty to the people of Iraq and their government.”

–Maj. Gen. Mel Montano, USANG, Ret

“This important legislation sets a new direction for Iraq. It acknowledges that America went to war without mobilizing the nation, that our strategy in Iraq has been tragically flawed since the invasion in March 2003, that our Army and Marine Corps are at the breaking point with little to show for it, and that our military alone will never establish representative government in Iraq. The administration got it terribly wrong and I applaud our Congress for stepping up to their constitutional responsibilities.”

–Maj. Gen. John Batiste, USA, Ret.

“We must commence a coordinated phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and condition our continuing support of the Iraqi government on its fulfilling the political commitments it has made to facilitate reconciliation of the contending secular factions. Otherwise, we will continue to be entwined in a hopeless quagmire, with continuing American casualties, which will render our ground forces ineffective.”

–Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, USA Ret.

The House just passed the Iraq “emergency” supplement appropriations bill. The Senate votes tomorrow, I believe.

Update:

Speaker Pelosi: Iraq Accountability Act Conference Report

Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

“This is the seventh emergency appropriations bill the Congress has had to pass to make up for the President’s failure. Seven emergencies. What is the surprise? Why aren’t they understanding the cost of this war in lives, in health? In reputation, in dollars, and the readiness of our military?”

Update: Here’s the roll call. Dems voting no were Barrow, Boren, Davis (Lincoln), Kucinich, Lee, Lewis (John), McNulty, Michaud, Marshall, Matheson, Taylor, Woolsey, and Waters. Republicans voting yes were Jones and Gilchrest.

The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Secretary of State Rice this afternoon. That’s Henry Waxman’s committee. Thomas Ferraro of Reuters reports,

Democratic lawmakers voted on Wednesday to subpoena Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about administration justifications for the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.

But the administration said it might fight the subpoena, citing a legal doctrine that can shield a president and his aides from having to answer questions from Congress.

“Those matters are covered by executive privilege,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, moving toward a possible legal showdown with the Democratic-led Congress.

On a party-line vote of 21-10, the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee directed Rice to answer questions from the panel next month about the administration’s claim — later proven false — that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for nuclear arms.

“There was one person in the White House who had primary responsibility to get the intelligence about Iraq right — and that was Secretary Rice who was then President George W. Bush’s national security adviser,” said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.

“The American public was misled about the threat posed by Iraq, and this committee is going to do its part to find out why,” Waxman said.

Sweet.

Update: Waxman’s committee also issued “two subpoenas to the Republican National Committee requesting the testimony of RNC Chairman Mike Duncan and documents related to possible violations of the Presidential Records Act and the Hatch Act by White House officials,” the committee web site says.

Outstanding —

The House-Senate Conference Committee has just approved the Iraq Accountability Act, which includes the troop readiness standards and benchmarks for the Iraqi government found in the bill that passed the House, as well as a mandatory date to begin redeployment. If the President cannot certify progress by the Iraqi government, redeployment must start by July of this year, with a goal of being completed within 180 days. If the President can certify progress by July, redeployment must begin by October 1 of this year, with a goal of completion within 180 days. Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued the following statement on the Conference Committee approval:

Pelosi and Reid Call on President to Support New Direction in Iraq

“The agreement reached between the House and the Senate rejects the President’s failed policies in Iraq and his open-ended commitment to keep American troops there indefinitely and forges a new direction for a responsible end to the war.

“If the President follows through on his veto threat, he will be the one who has failed to provide our troops and our veterans with the resources they need and it will be the President who has rejected the benchmarks he announced in January to measure success in Iraq. The bill ensures our troops are combat-ready before they are deployed to Iraq, provides our troops the resources and health care they deserve in Iraq and here at home, and responsibly winds down this war.

“Iraqis must take the tough and necessary steps to secure their nation and to forge political reconciliation. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates understands the value of timelines in motivating the Iraqi Government to accomplish these goals. The President should carefully consider the views of his Secretary of Defense in making a judgment on this legislation.

“An overwhelming majority of Americans, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, military experts and the Iraq Study Group believe that a responsible end to the war best advances our national security needs. It is now up to the President to make a decision: continue to stay his failed course or join us to give our troops a strategy for success.”

Mandatory redeployment, children. Now let’s hope it passes quickly.

The Associated Press reported earlier today,

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the start of a troop withdrawal from Iraq by Oct. 1, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

The legislation also sets a goal of a complete pullout by April 1, 2008, he said.

In remarks prepared for delivery, Reid said that under the legislation the troops that remain after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct “targeted counter-terror operations.”

Bush reaffirms rejecting timetable

Reid spoke a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats will pass. “I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job,” the president said.

Bush made his comments to reporters in the Oval Office as he met with senior military leaders, including his top general in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

Taken together, Reid’s speech and Bush’s comments inaugurated a week of extraordinary confrontation between the president and the new Democratic-controlled Congress over a war that has taken the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq today by a single suicide bomber.

Reid isn’t backing down. He said today that Bush is “in denial.”

“No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration’s incompetence and dishonesty,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) said in a speech in which he accused the president of living in a state of denial about events in Iraq more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion. …

… In his remarks, Reid criticized Bush and called Vice President Dick Cheney the president’s “chief attack dog,” lacking in credibility.

He likened the president to Lyndon Johnson, saying the former president ordered troop escalations in Vietnam in an attempt “to save his political legacy,” only to watch U.S. casualties climb steadily.

Bush, he said, “is the only person who fails to face this war’s reality — and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq’s future, but for ours.”

The Right is throwing everything they have at him, including David Broder of the Washington Post. Think Project explains,

David Broder, the sagely insightful “dean” of the Washington press corps, attacked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) today over his claim that the war in Iraq is lost.

Speaking on XM radio, Broder said that Reid should “learn to engage mind before mouth opens,” and suggested that Reid’s Senate allies “have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid” and his “bumbling performance.”

Asked if Harry Reid is “an embarrassment,” Broder said, “I think so,” since “every six weeks or so there’s another episode where he has to apologize for the way in which he has bungled the Democratic case.”

Well, somebody’s a public embarrassment, but I don’t think it’s Harry Reid.

Greg Sargent writes that, some reports to the contrary, Harry Reid has not backed off from or apologized for his “war is lost” comment from last week. See also Atrios.

The carnage in Iraq continues. Shashank Bengali, Laith Hammoudi and Nancy A. Youssef write for McClatchy Newspapers:

At least 173 people died in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of major explosions, making the day the capital’s deadliest since the onset nine weeks ago of a much-touted U.S.-Iraqi security plan.
The violence capped a dreadful seven days that began with a stunning suicide attack in the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least 363 people have died in Baghdad in the past week.

And Polly Toynbee writes for The Guardian:

It’s been a good week for death. In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called “a swimming pool of blood” with “pieces of flesh all over the place”. Remember that the dead are only part of the story: add to each of the war’s hundreds of thousands of civilian corpses all those burned and crippled survivors, far beyond Iraqi medical facilities’ ability to cope, breadwinners and babies lost. Few families are untouched by the sheer scale of slaughter.

Naturally, today officials at the Pentagon said that violence in Iraq is diminishing. Of course, this depends on what you mean by “violence” and “diminish.” And “Iraq.”

Just to show how secure the Pentagon is in its assessment — National Journal reports (subscriber only material, so I don’t have a link):

Pentagon lawyers abruptly blocked mid-level active-duty military officers from speaking Thursday during a closed-door House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee briefing about their personal experiences working with Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon’s last-minute refusal to allow the officers’ presentations surprised panel members and congressional aides, who are in the middle of an investigation into the effort to train and organize Iraqi forces.

Clearly, the Pentagon is proud of what it is accomplishing in Iraq.

Also on Wednesday, President Bush met with congressional Democrats to discuss the “emergency” supplemental appropriations bill, which Democrats in Congress are calling the Iraq Accountability Act. Greg Sargent provides a peek at what happened:

A source familiar with the meeting — at which no compromise of any kind was reached, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly today that it had been “productive” — shares a few interesting tidbits. First, the source says, Bush bristled and was taken aback when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the current situation to Vietnam; he also appeared irked by those who said the war couldn’t be won.

Second, according to the source, Reid told Bush that he understood that the White House would come after Congressional Dems after the veto of the bill with everything they had; Reid vowed to respond every bit as aggressively.

“Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam,” the source relates. “He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost.”

“The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it,” the source continued. “And he clearly didn’t like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn’t be won militarily.”

More: “Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue.”

Yesterday’s Dan Froomkin post:

There were no pyrotechnics, but according to multiple reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam at one point in a closed door meeting with Bush. Specifically, Reid suggested that Bush was pursuing a lost cause at the cost of American troops in order to protect his legacy.

Bush’s reaction: He was “visibly angered” says the New York Times; he “bristled” according to the Associated Press. And he “denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness,” write the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the Iraq Accountability Act makes its way toward completion. Last night some Republican House members attempted to to strip provisions in the Act holding the Iraqi government accountable and providing for a “responsible redeployment from Iraq” (nice phrase, that) before the bill goes to conference committee for reconciliation with the Senate version. This attempt failed.

Although the Act is still a work in progress, after slogging through a number of news stories I get the impression that the House might defer to the Senate regarding the timetable language. The Senate bill has a non-binding goal of March 31, 2008 for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The House version has a firm deadline of September 2008.

The war at home is over public opinion, and all signs are that the Dems are winning for once.

Dan Froomkin wrote on Tuesday:

President Bush’s public campaign to push back against Congressional demands for withdrawal from Iraq is becoming highly reminiscent of his failed effort two years ago to win support for a radical overhaul of Social Security.

The meticulously choreographed settings, the carefully controlled audiences, the mind-numbing repetition of hoary talking points (with a particular emphasis on stoking fears) — it’s like deja vu.

And so is the result: A public that is apparently more turned off to Bush’s ideas the more he talks about them.

As it was last time, Bush’s Bubble may be the central problem. Bush seems to think that through sheer force of will — and repetition — he will convince people that his cause is just — in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. And why does he think that? Quite possibly, because virtually everyone he talks to — and virtually everyone he sees — is already in his camp.

Via Atrios — here’s one of those famous Bush “town hall” meetings in front of a group of hand-picked drooling idiots with scripted questions. Bush says insightful things like “death is terrible.” Don’t watch on a full stomach. Continue reading →