The Daily Background

Iraq
Today the Senate will take up a bill similar to the one which narrowly passed the House of Representatives last week, which will include a binding requirement for US troops to be out of Iraq by March 2008 (the House version said August 31st). Both bills are attached to funding provisons for the war, in response to the President’s request for well over 100 billion dollars in emergency funding.

Senators Hagel (R-NE) and Webb (D-VA) will be introducing legislation of some sort this week meant to “affect the outcome, the conditions of American military involvement in Iraq.” It will apparently be “binding legislation, and it will be focused on deployment, redeployment, training, equipment.” The two Vietnam veterans have not provided more specifics than that.

2008
Tom Vilsack is supposedly expected to endorse Hillary Clinton today, almost exactly a month after dropping out of the race. Personally, I have no idea why he is doing this right now, other than to try and get an early start on Veepstakes because he’s obviously banking on her being the nominee (there were some signs when he was more friendly to her than the other candidates earlier on during the campaign as well). Or he could just be trying to maintain a sense of relevancy. Either way, it won’t last long and won’t matter in the long run.

Tillman report
The official report on the coverup which followed Pat Tillman’s 2004 death in Afghanistan will be released today, although its contents have already been leaked (read about them here).

Iraq part II
3,241 (3,230 Friday).

Filed under: Z-The Daily Brief, Z-TDB Blog