US Republicans blocked a looming Senate debate over President George W. Bush's Iraq war strategy after a rancorous session in which Democrats sought to bring to a vote a bill criticizing the president's plan. In a procedural vote in the 100-member body, majority Democrats could only muster 49 votes against 47 to proceed with the debate over Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq, when they needed 60 votes to go ahead.
That blocked the body from moving quickly toward a final vote on a non-binding resolution drafted in a compromise by Republican Senator John Warner and Democrat Carl Levin, which voices disagreement with the deployment of new troops and urges Bush to find other ways to achieve success in Iraq.
The fate of the Warner resolution remained unclear as well as several other competing bills, some of which strive to restrict Bush's war-making authority and others which attempt to give him a free hand to pursue the new strategy.
The outcome, on a procedural move to fix a time limit on the debate so the Warner bill would head for a final vote, was a blow to Democratic majority.
Democratic Senator Joseph Biden said the message of the Warner resolution condemning Bush's war plan was: "don't send more Americans into the middle of a civil war."
But Bush's supporters said passing the resolution criticizing the troop hike would undermine the military's mission.
