WASHINGTON — A Senate committee approved a toughly worded resolution Wednesday to oppose a troop buildup in Iraq, moving Congress a step closer to an official repudiation of President Bush's leadership of the increasingly violent 4-year-old war.
In a sign of how partisan the debate over Iraq remains, only one Republican joined Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support the nonbinding resolution, which bluntly declares: "It is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq."
But the vote -- which came the day after Bush asked Congress to give his proposal "a chance to work" -- followed hours of criticism of the new Iraq policy by Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Not a single committee member endorsed the White House plan.
With that resolution headed to the Senate floor for debate as soon as next week, momentum continued to build Wednesday behind a second, more bipartisan resolution opposing the Bush Iraq plan.
Both resolutions are nonbinding and stop well short of the limits Congress has put on spending to scale back other unpopular military operations, including the Vietnam War. But they mark a sharp departure from the largely deferential posture the Republican-led Congress assumed after Bush sought and won approval for the Iraq invasion in 2002.
And as support grows for some legislative action, it appears increasingly likely that Bush could face the equivalent of a no-confidence vote.
Asked in a CNN interview how the administration would react if the Senate passed a resolution against the president's Iraq plan, Vice President Dick Cheney said: "It won't stop us, and it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."
The foreign relations panel's resolution, passed 12 to 9, is sponsored by Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
The second resolution -- championed by veteran Republican Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia -- has attracted four GOP co-sponsors and six Democratic. And several Republican senators who voted against Biden's resolution in committee expressed interest in Warner's measure. One of Warner's co-sponsors, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said Wednesday evening that the measure's authors were talking with more lawmakers about joining on to the resolution.
