The Washington Post leads with the Dodd story:

Dodd introduced legislation to cap the number of troops in Iraq at roughly 130,000, saying that lawmakers should take an up-or-down vote on Bush’s plan to send additional troops to the country and not settle for the nonbinding resolution several Senate leaders prefer.

Later, however, Democratic senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.) were joined by Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska in putting forward a resolution that describes Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq as “not in the national interest of the United States.” Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, is considered a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2008.

There’s much at stake here, and despite fervently hoping that Congress can do something to checkmate the Bush/Cheney dogmatic stake in making yet another huge disastorous decision in Iraq, I can’t help but have misgivings about Congress setting troop limits. Take Bush and Iraq out of it and substitute Clinton and Bosnia, and you end up likening the Dodd position to something that Tom DeLay would have offered up. Or any of those neo military interventionists, really.

This press release sums up the strategy of those GOP stlawarts nicely:

Congressmen Launch Effort to Keep U.S. Troops From Deployment in Bosnia

Rep. Mark Neumann (R-WI) and Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) discussed their opposition to deploying U.S. troops as peacekeepers in Bosnia. Said Neumann: “We are at D-Day on the Bosnia issue. [Congress has] passed a resolution that is non-binding… [but] Speaker Gingrich as told us that if you want to keep troops from going to Bosnia then the way to do it is through the appropriations process. The logical way is through the Defense Appropriations bill… when the Defense Appropriations bill goes back to Conference we have to contact those folks and make sure [a provision banning use of Defense funds for a Bosnia deployment] is in it when it comes out of conference.” Said Stockman: “The President is listening to the United Nations more than to Congress. If you look at the restrictions being placed on our soldiers… they can’t fight back… this is crazy… my fear is that we’re going to get over there and it will be a quick quagmire.” Rep. Neumann later added: “U.S. troops under foreign command lined up alongside Russian soldiers as a neutral peacekeeping force in a country where we’ve just bombed the living daylights out of one side makes no sense to me and makes no sense to the people of Bosnia. We say ‘no’ to troops in Bosnia.” Rep. Neumann quotes Speaker Gingrich from the June 7, 1995 Congressional Record: “You want to cut off troops to Haiti or Somalia or you want to cut off troops in Bosnia, there is an easy way to do it. It is called the power of the purse… In fact, we have done it before. In the case of Lebanon, we did it. In the case of Somalia, we did it. We used the appropriations process exactly as the Federalist Papers described and exactly as the Founding Fathers wanted, as we had a clean and decisive choice.” Conferees on the DOD Appropriations bill are: Reps. Bill Young (R-FL), Joseph McDade (R-PA), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Joe Skeen (R-MN), David Hobson (R-OH), Henry Bonilla (R-TX),. George Nethercutt (R-WA), Ernest Istook (R-OK), John Murtha (D-PA), Norman Dicks (D-WA), Charlie Wilson (D-TX), Bill Hefner (D-NC), Senators Ted Stevens (R-AK), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Phil Gramm (R-TX), Kit Bond (R-MO), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Connie Mack (R-FL), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Mark Hatfield (R-OR), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Fritz Hollings (D-SC), J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA), Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Rep. Neumann has a press release available. Contact Rep Neumann via Rob Watters at 202/225-3031 or Rep. Stockman at 202/225-6565. source: National Center For Public Policy Research

I’m all for cutting appropriations funding. It’s high time that the costs of the occupation be scrutinized, accurately. In today’s NYT for example, What Can 1.2 Trillion Buy?, David Leonhardt asks

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon
estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff
members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House
economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost
could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part
for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic
even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have
typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale
economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial
predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom.
The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to
run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of
reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more
than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in
Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the
full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct
spending.

So let’s start there. Let’s start cutting back on the no-bid contracts awarded to Haliburton and their ilk first. Having Congress decide the troop strength is not in the best interest of the Nation. Even when letting Bush be the military “decider” is in the worst interest of the Nation. But laws and legislation transcend the occupant, and there should be a respect for the office and the powers that should have.