Bipartisan group of Senators vote on non-binding resolution to Bush's Iraq plan

[ProSense]

Opposition to Bush’s War Plan Is Mounting

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: January 17, 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — With a prominent Republican senator joining top Senate Democrats to oppose a troop increase in Iraq, President Bush met today with a group Republican senators in an effort to shore up support for his war plan.

The Senate is preparing to hold a vote on a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop increase. The move has added to the mounting political pressures on Mr. Bush — and on the Republicans who will have to vote on it — over his new Iraq strategy, which has met with widespread criticism.

But other Democrats said today that they would press for even tougher measures, such as demanding that the president seek congressional authorization before increasing the troop presence in Iraq.

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Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who has worked with senior Democrats on the Iraq resolution, is a long-time critic of the administration’s handling of the war. But the White House appeared intent on dissuading any fence-sitting Republicans from joining him.

Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana and a normally cautious foreign-policy expert, was among those invited to the White House. He warned that, “Iraq will not soon become the type of pluralist, unified, democratic bulwark in the center of the Middle East for which some in the Bush administration had hoped.”

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who heads the Armed Services Committee, were the chief architects of the resolution.

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Timeline: A one-year deadline, nine months later

[ProSense]

1. It'll have the same impact as

this.

[wisteria]

2. Exactly! n/t