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war stories: Military analysis.

Listen Up, Mr. PresidentIs Congress using the Iraq bills to send a message?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, March 29, 2007, at 6:13 PM ET

Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.

Two myths have sprung up around the House and Senate bills that require President Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. One is that he would have to pull out all the troops. The other is that, if Bush vetoes the final bill (as he is nearly certain to do), the war—and all other military activities—would grind to a halt, leaving the troops in the lurch, bereft of basic ammo and supplies.

Both myths are false, the product of spin.

The Pentagon has several ways to reroute money if a veto locks the emergency-spending bill in temporary limbo while Congress goes on Easter recess. And both chambers' bills leave leeway for quite a lot of U.S. troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely—though, true, there would be fewer than there are now, and they would perform less-ambitious missions.

Beyond this, the House version of the bill offers a political-military strategy toward Iraq that the White House might do well to emulate—as a general approach, if not in all its details.

First, let's deal with the consequences of a veto. The congressional demands for a troop withdrawal are merely sections of the much larger bill to provide $96 billion in emergency spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A veto would kill not only the language on withdrawal but also the $96 billion.

Administration officials invoke the time when President Bill Clinton vetoed the Republican Congress' budget and House Speaker Newt Gingrich walked away, forcing the federal government to shut down—a series of events that politically tarnished the Republicans in the long run. Officials warn that the same thing will happen to the congressional Democrats if they force Bush to shut down the war.

That's not going to happen. A story in today's edition of the Hill outlines several ways the Pentagon could still get funds to the troops. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates could "reprogram" money from one account to another. He could shift "unobligated balances" from the operations and maintenance accounts. If worst comes to worst, he could invoke the Civil War-era Feed and Forage Act, which allows him to allocate money for the troops' basic provisions without congressional approval.

Finally, it seems the Pentagon's war chest won't go bare until the beginning of June. If Bush vetoes the emergency-spending bill and Congress goes on recess till mid-April, it will be an administrative hassle but not a disaster.

But more to the point, what's in these bills? Exactly what would they force Bush to do?

The Senate bill does take out the cleaver. No later than 120 days after the bill's enactment, the president "shall commence the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq," with "the goal of redeploying" all combat troops by March 31, 2008.

Even so, there are some loopholes. First, there are those two words I've italicized above: The March 2008 deadline is put forth as not the requirement but rather "the goal."

Second, the bill allows "a limited number" of combat forces to stay "that are essential for the following purposes: (A) Protecting United States and coalition personnel and infrastructure. (B) Training and equipping Iraqi forces. (C) Conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations."

Force-protection, infrastructure, training, counterterrorism—these missions could justify keeping at least 50,000 American troops in Iraq for a long, long time.

The clear intent of this provision—and this is true in the House bill as well—is not so much to end the Iraq war but to return to the course that U.S. commanders were taking late last year, before Bush ordered the "surge" in force levels and shifted to a more active counterinsurgency plan.