"Pressure is growing on the Bush administration to enunciate a detailed strategy for the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, particularly about how it might end.
It's been little noted in the U.S. media, but the U.N. mandate that provided President Bush the diplomatic imprimatur for using military force in Iraq is due to expire. As reported in The Financial Times on Friday, Resolution 1546 is set to expire after the December elections in Iraq. The president has, of course, not always shown himself willing to wait for international sanction, but his Iraq adventure would be diplomatically complicated by the failure of the U.S.-backed resolution to extend the U.N. mandate for another year.
A resolution with bipartisan support in the U.S. House, meanwhile, would demand that Bush at least lay out a road map, if not a timetable, for what the war in Iraq should accomplish and when.
It's an example of Congress' attempt to regenerate a spine. The indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and the continuing investigation into the administration's prewar justifications for the invasion have given members of Congress who voted for the war reason to question whether they were bamboozled.
And the slog in Iraq plays a big role in the president's plummeting approval ratings, with more than twice as many people strongly disapproving of Bush's performance than strongly approving.
Painful as it may be for some, this harsh examination of our foreign policy -- and of ourselves -- is healthy and long overdue."-from the SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD.
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