Bush: 'I am about to veto a bill'

[XGhozt 410]

President Bush, poised to veto a $124-billion war spending bill that demands timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq, plans to meet with congressional leaders on Wednesday to start crafting a war bill that the White House will accept.

 

“I am about to veto a bill that has got artificial timelines for withdrawal,’’ Bush said today in the Rose Garden. "I have made my position very clear, the Congress chose to ignore it, and so I will veto the bill.’’

 

The stage for a veto could be set mid-week, when congressional leaders meet with the president at the White House. And neither the House nor Senate, which approved the bill by narrow margins last week, apparently holds the votes to override Bush’s veto.

 

This could come as soon as Tuesday, when the president plans to travel to the Tampa, Fla., headquarters of the U.S. Central Command which overseas the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

This also will be the fourth anniversary of the day on which the president landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and declared that major combat had concluded in Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 – with a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished’’ stretched across the tower of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

 

 

More than four years into war, with a 30,000-troop escalation of U.S. forces in Iraq still underway, the White House is refusing to accept any limitation that Democratic congressional leaders hope to impose on U.S. military commanders.

 

Bush complains that the bill which Congress has approved, demanding the start of troop withdrawals by October and setting a goal of full withdrawal by spring of 2008 “imposes the judgment of people here in Washington on our military commanders and diplomats.’'

 

The president, joined by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Barroso following a summit for U.S. and European Union leaders, fielded only a few questions from reporters assembled in the Rose Garden today

 

Nearly three months into a standoff with Congress over supplemental war funding, the president is holding out hope that an agreement can be reached with Democratic leaders, with the president insisting he is “interested in their opinions’’ but nonnegotiable on time-frames.

 

“I look forward to working with members of both parties to get a bill that doesn't set artificial timetables and doesn't micromanage and gets the money to our troops,’’ Bush said. “I believe that there's a lot of Democrats that understand that we need to get the money to the troops as soon as possible… So I'm optimistic we can get something done in a positive way.’’

 

Yet the White House maintains that, as much as leaders and the president debate the issue, the central goal of the legislation which congressional leaders spent months crafting is unacceptable to the president: Any prediction of a date by which troops will pull back.

 

The White House also is urging Congress to go ahead and deliver the bill, so that Bush can veto it as quickly as possible and proceed with talks for an “acceptable’’ bill.

 

"It's now been passed for five days,’’ Tony Snow, the White House press secretary said Monday, his first day back at work following a month away in which he has charted a course for the treatment of recurring colon cancer that has spread to his liver. Snow, who will start chemotherapy on Friday, has returned with a characteristically combative spirit.

 

“We're not sure why it's been so difficult to convey it one mile up Pennsylvania Avenue,’’ Snow said of the war spending bill. “I could walk down and pick it up today… But the president understands that people wanted to make a political statement, fine.’’

 

While Snow maintains that the president “does feel positive and optimistic that we’ll get an acceptable bill, Snow also had this message for Congress: “Let's go ahead and get on with this… A clear veto message has been out for over a month. A symbolic vote has taken place… Come back and do your real work and get the bill passed.''

 

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_t...i_am_about.html

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Does this mean we will stay in Iraq?!

[Senior Airman Vudoo. 40]

yes...

[Kenshyn 638]

Yes, because Bush is a prick and Congress is proposing a bill for Bush to pull troops out and he told Congress "It doesn't matter, I'll just veto it"

 

Haha, what a douche.

[HG-Bounder-X 121]

I hope congress overrides him...

He's a bastard apparently

[Kenshyn 638]

Seriously, what does it take to get impeached?

[Div 0]

im not a big bush fan, but i am with him on this simply because this would be a repeat of the Vietnamese war. In vietnam we pulled out, and what did we lose? Well it was a huge slap in the face to the american morale, hundreds of thousands of deaths were all in vain, communists destroyed the country the second we left and to this day vietnam remains communist. If we we're to pull out now, all those deaths would be in vain, a regime would take over and a new sadaam hussein would take over. A blank check does not guarantee that we can win the war within that time table, and if we dont win the war, we just wasted 6 trillion dollars.