A senate committee approved a toughly worded resolution on Wednesday to oppose a troop buildup in Iraq, moving Congress a step closer to an official repudiation of President Bush’s leadership of the increasingly violent four-year-old war. In a sign of how partisan the debate over Iraq remains, only one Republican joined Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support the resolution, which bluntly declares “it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq.’’ But the vote—the day after the president asked Congress to give his proposal “a chance to work’’—followed hours of criticism of the latest Iraq policy by Democratic as well as Republican lawmakers. Not a single senator on the committee endorsed the White House plan. And with that resolution headed to a debate on the Senate floor as soon as next week, momentum also continued to build behind a second, more bipartisan resolution opposing the Bush Iraq plan. As support builds for some legislative action, it appears increasingly likely Bush could face the equivalent of a no-confidence vote. Both resolutions are nonbinding and stop well short of limits that Congress has used to scale back other unpopular military operations, including the Vietnam War. But they mark a sharp departure from the largely deferential posture the Republican-led Congress assumed after Bush sought and won approval for the invasion in 2002. The resolution passed 12-9 on Wednesday by the Foreign Relations Committee is sponsored by Sens. Joseph Biden, Democrat, Chuck Hagel, Republican, and Carl Levin, Democrat. The second resolution, championed by veteran Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, has now attracted four GOP co-sponsors and six Democratic co-sponsors. And several Republican senators who voted against Biden’s resolution in committee expressed interest in the measure. One of Warner’s co-sponsors, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Wednesday evening that the measure’s authors are talking with even more lawmakers about joining onto the resolution. Warner’s stature as a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Navy secretary has helped draw Republican support. His proposal also is not complicated by presidential politics. Both Biden and Hagel have expressed interest in running for the White House. The Warner resolution “disagrees’’ with the president’s plans to send 17,500 additional troops in Baghdad, noting the rising sectarian violence in the capital and the poor record of Iraqi cooperation with U.S. initiatives. But it also includes deferential language recognising the president’s authority as commander in chief and accepts the possibility that the 4,000 additional troops the president wants in Anbar Province may be needed. -Noam N. Levey
