WP: Democrats Signal a Wider Battle Lasting the Rest of President's Term

Saturday, February 17, 2007; Page A01

After enjoying great deference in the conduct of national security for his first six years in office, President Bush now faces an assertive opposition Congress that has left him on the defensive. The nonbinding resolution passed on a largely party-line vote seems certain to be the first of a series of actions that will challenge Bush for the remainder of his presidency.

At stake is not just Bush's decision to send an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq, the plan specifically renounced by the resolution. By extension, the 246 to 182 vote passed judgment on Bush's overall stewardship of the war in Iraq and, more broadly, of his leadership in the world. At a time when the president is confronting Iran over its nuclear enrichment program, the House vote demonstrates that he has far less latitude to take aggressive action than he might have had in the past.

"This is an important moment," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser and is now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And it's an important moment not only about what's in the past, or even in the present, but also what might be happening in the future."

The resolution, he said, "tells the president that the country's increasingly tired of the war and the country's reaction to his provoking a new war would be even worse."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602049.html

Congress just gave him the middle finger.

BULLSHIT!!! That non-binding resolution was actually relatively BI-PARTISAN. There were 17 Repubs that voted for it, and these days, that's about as bi-partisan as anything gets.

I miss seeing him on the teevee.

Congress took a week to pass a non-binding resolution...practically the weakest of all the options.

I always thought the 'surge' was just some distraction used by a President, thoroughly repudiated in elections last year, to give the appearance of a policy shift in a desperate attempt to keep his popularity from slipping any lower.

Didn't think anyone was taking it seriously...

The good news is, it's a step in the right direction. It beats being gagged. One hopes that the congress will be enervated by this limited success and parlay it to bigger things.

--IMM

And hopefully not too late.