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Democrats look to repeal war authorization

Two key Senate Democrats have prepared a binding bill that would repeal the 2002 authorization to go to war in Iraqand replace it with a set of narrow missions aimed at getting the U.S. to withdraw all combat troops by early 2008.

Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, are preparing a bill that could come to a vote late this week or early next week.

While still being written, aides said the bill would authorize the military to be involved in missions to deny terrorists a safe have, to train Iraq security forces and to defend Iraq’s borders.

Withdrawal by 2008 is not an arbitrary deadline drawn up by Biden and Levin, but rather was taken from the bipartisan report by the Iraq Study Group released last year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday that he does not want to delay a vote for too long, but also wants to have something Republicans — some of them, at least — can support.

“To change course in Iraq, we’re going to need some support from the minority,” Reid said. “We need a political solution to this. We’re losing 20 soldiers in Iraq each week. The war’s costing us about $425 million a day. So it’s obvious the course must change.”

Democrats “are united,” he said. “We are united in changing the course of the war in Iraq.”

Meanwhile, House Democrats held a closed-door meeting Tuesday night to discuss what restrictions, if any, they might include on the $100 billion wartimes supplemental spending bill that could change the Bush administration’s Iraq policy but reached no decisions.