Bush Challenged on Iraq

"It was the first time Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have met with Bush to discuss the war since the House and Senate approved bills to provide funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with conditions that he has vowed to reject. . . .

"'We believe he must search his soul, his conscience and find out what is the right thing for the American people,' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, told reporters after the session. 'I believe signing this bill will do that.'

"But Dana Perino, White House spokeswoman, said, 'It appears that they are determined to send a bill to the president that he won't accept. They fundamentally disagree.'"

David Rogers writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "One of the sharpest exchanges came when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) suggested that, like President Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War, Mr. Bush was plunging ahead not wanting to admit that the war couldn't be won. The president denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness. And at another point, Mr. Bush allowed that he shared many of Ms. Pelosi's goals in changing the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, but believed Congress was going about it in the wrong way."

So where does it go from here? Peter Baker and Jonathan Weisman write in The Washington Post: "Congressional Democratic leaders are moving to make their proposed timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq 'advisory' as they seek to reconcile two versions of war spending legislation into a single bill that they plan to pass next week, according to several House members.

"The compromise language would keep the deadlines included in the original House bill but make them nonbinding, as the Senate version did, and would allow President Bush to waive troop-readiness standards, lawmakers said. Bush has vowed to veto legislation with timetables in it, calling it a schedule of surrender, but Democrats hope to show that they are being flexible and the president rigid by softening the terms."

Gonzales Watch

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is testifying today before the Senate Judiciary Committee in what Republican Sen. Arlen Specter has dubbed his "re-confirmation hearing."

Here is the text of committee chairman Patrick Leahy's opening statement: "Last November, the American people rejected this Administration's unilateral approach to government and to the President acting without constitutional checks and balances. Rather than heed that call, within days of that election, senior White House and Justice Department staff finalized plans to proceed with the simultaneous mass firings of a large number of top federal prosecutors.

"By so doing, they sent the unmistakable message -- not only to those forced out but also to those who remained -- that traditional, independent law enforcement by U.S. Attorneys would no longer be tolerated by this Administration. Instead, partisan loyalty had become the yardstick by which all would be judged.

"I cannot excuse the Attorney General's actions and his failures from the outset to be forthright with us, with these prosecutors and with the American people.

"The White House political operatives who helped spearhead this plan did not have effective and objective law enforcement as their principal goal. They would be happy to reduce United States Attorneys offices to another political arm of the Administration.

"If nothing improper was done, people need to stop hiding the facts and need to tell the truth, the whole truth. If the White House did nothing wrong, then show us. Show us the documents and provide us with the sworn testimony of what was done -- why, and by whom. If there is nothing to hide, then the White House should quit hiding it.