"Murtha Vows to Block Bush Surge Plan"

The Politico:

Rep. Jack Murtha, one of the most vocal congressional opponents of the war in Iraq, is vowing to block President Bush’s plan to send another 21,500 U.S. combat troops to Iraq by restricting the administration’s military options in a new wartime spending bill.

“We’re gonna stop this surge,” the Pennsylvania Democrat declared in an interview posted on the Website MoveCongress.org.

Stepping up his campaign against the White House, Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, told Tom Andrews, a former congressman-turned-activist, in the online interview that he would attach so many conditions to an upcoming spending bill for Iraq that the Pentagon would not be able to find enough troops to carry out the president’s “surge” plan.

The Andrews group, the Win Without War Coalition, is part of a larger federation of anti-war groups sponsoring the site.

Murtha will oversee the $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that the House will consider in mid-March. And he wants to impose new restrictions on how the president can deploy combat forces from the United States to Iraq, allow combat veterans to have at least one year stateside before returning to the frontlines and prevent the Pentagon from keeping soldiers and Marines already in Iraq in uniform after their enlistments expire.

“This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge,” Murtha predicted of next month’s floor fight over the wartime supplemental appropriation. “We’re trying to force redeployment [of troops outside Iraq], not by taking money away but by redirecting it.”

Murtha is not pushing a total cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq. But he is considering measure to limit the military actions Bush can take against Iran, although the congressman was more cautious than his statements about Iraq.

“We are looking at the possibility of putting language in the bill that says you can’t go into Iran unless you have authorization [from Congress],” Murtha said.

Murtha also intends to push a provision to bar the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and to raze the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

The strategy being employed by Murtha and other House Democratic leaders would force Bush and Republican congressional leaders to accept the new troop restrictions, or face the possibility the supplemental spending bill would falter, thus cutting off all funding for the war.

Democrats are betting that Bush and the Republicans won’t take that risk and will go along with the Democratic proposals. And Republican leaders are not taking Murtha’s threats lightly.

The Republican National Committee has e-mailed supporters, urging them to contact newspapers and other media outlets to object to the congressman’s proposals.

The RNC was reacting to a story in The Politico on Wednesday that spelled out the Democratic strategy of cutting off the supply of troops available for the war, while retaining funding for forces already deployed in Iraq.

Without the troops to execute the surge, the Pentagon would find it increasingly difficult to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

Republicans have repeatedly charged that Democrats want to “cut off funding for the troops,” and the Democratic strategy seeks to deflect those charges.

The Democratic plan was characterized in The Politico as the “slow-bleed strategy,” which was not a term used by any Democrats or the anti-war groups supporting their efforts.

The RNC, however, attributed the phrase to Democrats, and it was used in their e-mail alert.

“‘Slow bleed' is exactly the right name for this incredibly irresponsible and dangerous strategy,” RNC Chairman Mike Duncan wrote in his e-mail, which included a Web link to donate to the GOP.

“Cutting and running is bad enough,’’ he said. “But the Murtha-Pelosi 'slow-bleed' plan is far worse. It is a cynical and dangerous erosion of our ability to fight the terrorists while we still have men and women on the ground in Iraq.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee and Senate Republicans are also preparing to use the “slow-bleed” line in their own news releases, slamming Murtha and the Democrats.