September looms as Bush's moment of truth on Iraq
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By Caren Bohan - Analysis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior lawmakers in President George W. Bush's own Republican Party are rebelling over the Iraq war and Americans are fed up with it, but Bush has bluntly said he will not heed their calls for a pullout -- at least not now.
Whether he is resolute or stubborn, Bush may well have bought himself two more months to press ahead with his war strategy, but no matter how much he insists he will not back down, analysts say he may be forced to by September.
Mid-September is the deadline for a broad report assessing the troop buildup Bush ordered at the start of this year. Only a few weeks ago, the White House was playing that down as a mere progress report, although the president lately has signaled he is aware that it is pivotal.
"September seems to be the make or break date," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.
Even with senior Republicans such as Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar breaking ranks with Bush over Iraq, there is no consensus yet between anti-war Democrats and Republican skeptics on legislative proposals to try to change the war strategy.
That could change by September.
Lugar and Sen. John Warner of Virginia, two of the Republican Party's most respected voices on national security, have offered a proposal to require Bush to draft a plan for a possible troop pullout to begin by the end of the year.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, was wary of embracing it, with his spokesman saying it allowed Bush too much leeway to decide whether to change course.
NOT THEIR JOB
Bush last week reacted to the Republican lawmakers' criticisms by saying he was happy to listen to them but it was not their job to run the war.
"Congress has all the right in the world to fund," Bush said at a news conference. "That's their main involvement in this war, which is to provide funds for our troops."
Still, he enlisted top aides such as national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to visit and telephone lawmakers to try to quell the revolt.
Some Republicans found more cause for concern in an interim report that found progress on only eight of 18 political and security goals for Iraq. Bush said it was too soon to gauge the effectiveness of the 28,000-troop increase because the extra troops have only been fully in place since June.
But he added that when the September report comes out, he might be open to "making another decision" about his Iraq strategy if further progress is not achieved by then.
Not only is the broader Iraq report due on September 15, but that is a time when campaigning for the 2008 presidential and congressional elections will move into higher gear.
Still stinging from the Democratic takeover of Congress in last year's midterm elections, Republicans fear an even more devastating blow in next year's elections if the U.S. still has a large troop presence in Iraq.
A USA Today/Gallup poll showed more than seven in 10 Americans favor withdrawing nearly all U.S. troops by April.
"I think that the president would probably prefer to sustain his current Iraq policy just as long as he can," said William Galston, a former domestic policy aide in the Clinton administration now with the Brookings Institution. "Clearly, the political ground is shifting under him."
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial" quotes Bush as vowing to stick it out in Iraq even if his wife, Laura, and his dog, Barney, are the only supporters he has left. Yet some analysts noted that while Bush usually does not give ground when he is convinced he is right, he does sometimes bend when he has to.
Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, who has long followed Bush's career, said if it becomes clear there are enough Senate Republican votes to force his hand on Iraq, Bush would try to get out in front of that and begin to revise his strategy.
"He would not let it get to the point where he would lose control over his own foreign policy," Buchanan said.
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