Vol. 71/No. 23      June 11, 2007

The bill passed after the Democratic majority in the Senate and House of Representatives dropped schemes to tie the funding to deadlines for redeploying U.S. troops in Iraq. Bush vetoed such a bill May 1. Democrats have used the “debate” to posture as “antiwar,” while funding the imperialist wars.

The new bill ties a small amount of “reconstruction aid” to benchmarks the Iraqi government is supposed to meet, measuring Baghdad’s progress in reconciling Shiite and Sunni capitalist forces vying for greater control of the country’s oil. It also contains a loophole allowing Bush to spend the money regardless of whether any benchmarks are met.

Democrats tried to shake off responsibility for the bill’s passage to the president’s veto. “Like it or not, we ran out of options,” said Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off those funds to those troops in the field.”

The bill passed in a 280-142 House vote, with 86 Democrats and 194 Republicans in favor. The Senate vote was 80-14, with 37 Democrats and 42 Republicans backing it.

In Iraq, U.S. and British troops battled the Mahdi militia, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighting erupted May 25 in Baghdad and Basra, hours after Sadr made his first pubic speech in Iraq since January, a Friday sermon at a mosque in Kufa.

U.S. intelligence officials had claimed that Sadr fled to Iran in fear of his safety shortly after Bush’s January 10 announcement that thousands of additional U.S. troops would be sent to Iraq to clamp down on militias such as Sadr’s.

In addition to its militia, Sadr’s forces hold 30 seats in the Iraqi parliament. Six of these deputies resigned in April from the cabinet of Iraq’s prime minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, as the U.S. military stepped up operations against the militia.

Soon after Sadr’s sermon, a team of Iraqi special forces and British troops reportedly killed Wissam Abu Qadir, head of the Sadr’s Mahdi militia in Basra, along with three others. The killing led to a three-hour firefight as the militia responded.

Five Iraqis were killed in Sadr City May 26, when U.S. warplanes fired on the occupants of nine vehicles the Pentagon said were preparing to ambush U.S. troops that had just captured a militia leader. A local Mahdi spokesman said those killed were not members of the group and the vehicles had been lined up at a gas station since 5:00 a.m.
 
 
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