Bush Urges Prompt Passing of War Funding Bill

President Bush today continued to urge Democrats to promptly pass a $100 billion war funding bill that does not set a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq, warning that the safety of the American homeland is at stake.

"One of the lessons of September the 11th is what happens overseas matters to the security of the United States of America, and we must not forget that lesson," Bush told a gathering of military families at the White House. "The consequences of failure would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America. To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists."

Bush also served notice that at a meeting Wednesday with congressional leaders he will not negotiate with Democrats who are demanding that the funding bill set a timetable to wind down American involvement in the war, which has claimed the lives of almost 3,300 U.S. service members.

"Congress needs to put partisanship on hold, needs to get rid of all the politics right now, and send me an emergency war spending bill that I can sign, that gets our troops the support they need and gives our commanders the flexibility they need to complete this mission," Bush said.

His comments mark the latest attempt by the Bush administration to ramp up pressure on the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a bill with no timetable. Over the weekend, Vice President Cheney predicted that Congress will approve funding for the Iraq war with no strings attached, although not until after a veto showdown with President Bush.

The House and Senate each have passed bills to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; soon, they are expected to begin negotiating a final version to send to Bush. Both bills contain troop withdrawal deadlines. Bush has promised to veto any bill with such deadlines.

"I am willing to discuss any way forward that does not hamstring our troops, set an artificial timetable for withdrawal . . . " Bush said of Wednesday's meeting. "The American people expect the leaders in Washington to find common ground, but they also expect the Congress and the White House to work together to make sure our troops get funded, quickly. We should not legislate defeat in this vital war."

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) today pledged to send Bush a bill with timetables, calling the president's recent troop surge in Baghdad a failure.

"If you look at strictly numbers -- number of Iraqis being killed, number of bombs being detonated, number of American soldiers being killed, averaging a little more than three a day now -- that should say it all: The surge hasn't worked," Reid said at a news conference on Capitol Hill.

Reid said Congress is committed to "fully funding the troops" but also to "changing the course in Iraq, and responsibly ending the conflict in faraway Iraq."

"The president has a choice to make in the coming days: cling to the discredited policies that have led our troops further into this intractable civil war or work with a bipartisan majority of Congress to make us more secure," Reid said.

In his speech today to the military families, Bush sought to link the Iraq war to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and he repeatedly warned that failure to resolve the four-year-old Iraq conflict will jeopardize the safety of people in the United States.

"If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won't leave us alone," he said. "They will follow us to the United States of America. That's what makes this battle in the war on terror so incredibly important."

At another point, Bush said: "We owe it to the American people to make this nation safer. The most solemn obligation of the government in Washington is to provide security for the American people and to protect them from harm."

Later, Bush added, "Our troops face depraved and determined enemies, enemies that could just as easily come here to kill us."