Reply #36: yes because the President is Commander in Chief

[LSK]

So the President can withdraw troops from Iraq without Congress's consent, however, the President needs to the Congress to continue to provide the funding. Now I have seen the argument that Congress should just spend no more spending bills to the Bush. However, (nobody has confirmed this one way or another) it is a popular belief that Bush would just steal money from Defense, VA, CIA, FBI and other areas to continue his war.

Now if we have a Dem President, it is incredibly unlikely that Congress will pass a law saying the President cannot withdraw troops from Iraq. I also have no reason to think that Obama or Clinton will keep the war going. I really believe both will work to get us out of there.

Now all these claims and bickering in here about who voted for the war, who continues to vote for the war, etc etc are incredibly simplistic. As far as I know Obama and Clinton voted for the war because they voted for bills that had timetables and before 2006 the GOP would combine Iraq spending bills with bills such as Katrina relief. So they were forced to vote for the war if they wanted to also fund Katrina relief. I really hate these arguments in this forum because so many are newbies and I do not recall seeing most of these people when a few of us diehards were staying up late at night watching the GOP pass these huge spending bills that were 1000 pages long and only introduced the night before. Many seemed to have been oblivious to what happened before 2005 in the Congress or they seemed to have forgotten how bad it was.

Having said all of that, I think Harry Reid has done a horrible job as Senate majority leader and Pelosi and Hoyer are truly maddening in their stonewalling of the impeachment movement.