Later, on the Times website, Levey, reporting on the Senate's 51 to 46 passage of the same bill, begins with:
More than three decades after Congress helped force an end to the Vietnam War, a new generation of lawmakers today sent the president legislation mandating that U.S. combat forces come home from Iraq.
The historic Senate vote -- which followed House passage of the measure Wednesday -- came less than four months after Democrats took power on Capitol Hill amid public anxiety over the war.And it presented President Bush with the most serious legislative challenge of his presidency, thrusting a withdrawal timeline on a fiercely resistant White House.
Separately, the Times reports on the Senate passage with a less celebratory article from Associated Press that cites the president's "Mission Accomplished" speech of May 1, 2003 and suggests that Democrats plan to submit the war funding bill to the president on May 1st as a sort of political stunt.
Is this anything more than political gamesmanship? Democrats pass a bill they know Bush will veto. They know they don't have the votes to override the veto. They're behaving as if they are still in high school, voting for Most Popular Sophomore or Student Council president.
