Dems offer plans for troops

Coloradans' proposals seek return of Guard, possible redeployment

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, May 25, 2007

Four Colorado Democrats are touting their own plans to bring the troops home.

Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Denver, and Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, are pushing identical bills in each house that would force President Bush to implement the recommendations made months ago by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

And Reps. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, and Diana DeGette, D-Denver, introduced a bill Thursday calling for redeployment of all National Guard troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan within 90 days of the bill's enactment.

Their rationale: The Guard is needed more at home than overseas to handle natural disasters and combat domestic terror.

The 15,931 National Guard troops in Iraq and Afghanistan represent about 11 percent of the U.S. military in the region, according to the Congressional Research Service. An additional 13,000 National Guard troops have been mobilized as part of the recent surge.

"Their equipment is in Iraq getting damaged, often beyond repair, and the general policy that the Army will replace their equipment has been suspended," Perlmutter said in a statement. "For training purposes, this is highly detrimental, and even more evident and worrisome is the impact of equipment shortage on natural disaster relief."

A war funding bill passed by Congress does not include a timetable for withdrawal. That timetable was removed in negotiations with Bush and other Republicans who called them an arbitrary prescription for failure.

Salazar's and Udall's bills would require Bush to include the cost of the war in his annual budget request. The bills also would set conditions that could lead to redeployment of U.S. troops as early as the first quarter of 2008, so long as security, diplomatic and infrastructure benchmarks are met.

"The question now before us is how do we disengage from Iraq in an orderly way," Salazar said in a conference call Thursday. "I think the White House needs to take its hands off its ears" and listen to the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, "and so does Congress."

Udall said his bill for a "diplomatic surge" in Iraq was "an approach around which I think most Americans can rally - and will rally."