The US: In a vote charged with election-year politics, the US House of Representatives yesterday passed a symbolic resolution that wrapped the Iraq conflict into the war on terrorism and rejected a deadline for US troop withdrawal.
The house voted 256-153 largely on party lines for the resolution that sparked two days of emotional debate as Republicans sought to depict Democrats as weak on terrorism, while Democrats decried President George Bush's policies that they said led to chaos in Iraq and detracted from the fight against al-Qaeda.
"Will we fight or will we retreat? That's the question that's posed to us," said house majority leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. "Defeating repressive radical terrorists and their allies is our defining task of the 21st century." But in impassioned debate, John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, erupted in anger at Republicans who advocated continuing the fight in Iraq.
Mr Murtha, a Vietnam veteran and defence hawk who rocked Congress last year when he turned against the war, said it was "easy to stay in an air-conditioned office and say I'm going to stay the course".
He continued: "That's why I get so upset when they stand here sanctimoniously and say we're fighting this thing. It's the troops that are doing the fighting."
Mr Bush has seen his popularity plummet, largely because of the war, and Republicans are hoping to avoid being dragged down by the conflict in November elections.
The senate prepared to debate Iraq next week after Republicans forced a vote on Thursday on Massachusetts Democratic senator John Kerry's amendment to withdraw US forces by this year's end.
In the house, many Democrats called the Republican resolution a sham that tried to connect the Iraq war with the September 11th attacks, even though no such links have been established.
The non-binding resolution declares that the US will prevail in the war on terrorism and declares that it is not in the national interest to "set an arbitrary date to withdraw or redeploy US forces" from Iraq.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California called it "an affirmation of the president's failed policy in Iraq".
With mounting public discontent over the war that so far has caused 2,500 US military deaths, some Republicans acknowledged errors were made, but said the US must stay to stabilise Iraq. "To be sure, mistakes have been made in Iraq, from pre-war intelligence to de-Bathification, to the destructive events of Abu Ghraib, but these mistakes should not stop us from our goal," said Charles Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican.
In Baghdad yesterday, a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people inside a Shia mosque, a day after the national security adviser said al-Qaeda's days are numbered in Iraq. He blew himself up as worshippers gathered for prayers at the Buratha mosque, a site that is revered by Shias. Twenty-five people were wounded. - (Reuters)