The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #62901 Message #1605933
Posted By: Amos
15-Nov-05 - 07:21 PM
Thread Name: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views of the Bush Administration
AP Photo DCSW101
By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The GOP-controlled Senate rejected a Democratic call Tuesday for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but urged President Bush to outline his plan for ``the successful completion of the mission'' in a bill reflecting a growing bipartisan unease with his Iraq policies.
The overall measure, adopted 98-0, shows a willingness to defy the president in several ways despite a threatened veto. It would restrict the techniques used to interrogate terror detainees, ban their inhuman treatment and call for the administration to provide lawmakers with quarterly reports on the status of operations in Iraq.
The bill was not without victories for the president, including support for the military tribunals Bush wants to use to try detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet even that was tempered, with language letting the inmates appeal to a federal court their designation as enemy combatants and their sentences.
The Senate's votes on Iraq showed a willingness even by Republicans to question the White House on a war that's growing increasingly unpopular with Americans.
Polls show Bush's popularity has tumbled in part because of public frustration over Iraq, a war that has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 American troops.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the outcome was ``a vote of no confidence on the president's policies in Iraq.'' Republicans ``acknowledged that there need to be changes made,'' he said. ...
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