Lawmakers seek deadline for pullout: US troops in Iraq
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, June 13: Lawmakers of America’s ruling Republican Party are urging the Bush administration to set a deadline for pulling out US troops from Iraq. Some Republican lawmakers, however, advised President Bush to revamp his Iraq policy to deal effectively with a persistent insurgency.
The support for a troop withdrawal is already growing in the opposition Democratic Party. State Democratic parties in California, Massachusetts and New Mexico have already endorsed the demand for withdrawal.
At a convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, this weekend, an increasingly large number of Democrats demanded a pullout from Iraq. When members of the US House of Representatives voted May 25 on California Democrat Lynn Woolsey’s amendment calling on President Bush to “develop a plan as soon as practicable after the date of the enactment of this act to provide for the withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Iraq,” 122 Democrats backed it, as did five Republicans and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
As the demand for the pullout intensifies, the US military announced the killing of four more US soldiers in Iraq over the weekend, pushing the American death toll past 1,700 — more than double of what it was a year ago.
Since last June 13 — when 825 members of the US military had died in Iraq — the insurgency that took shape with the fall of Saddam Hussein has increased its toll on American forces and Iraqi soldiers and civilians alike.
So far, more than 1,700 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 – with at least 1,297 as a result of hostile action.
Congressman Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week” that he would offer legislation this week setting a timetable for the US withdrawal from Iraq.
“I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we’ve done about as much as we can do,” said Mr Jones, who coined the phrase “freedom fries” to lash out at the French for opposing the Iraq invasion.
