GOP Senators Kill Dem Iraq Withdrawal Bill

Senate Republicans today blocked a bill that would have funded the Iraq war and set a withdrawal deadline of December 15, 2008. The legislation cleared the House but received only 53 of 60 needed votes in the Senate. "It's telling our soldiers, you're losers, when they're winners. So we're going to defeat it, now and forever," said Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The bill would have given President Bush $50 billion of the $196 billion that he's requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reuters reports. Democrats have said they will issue no more "blank checks" for the war and that if this bill didn't pass, the matter of war funding would not be taken up again until next year. (More Iraq war stories.)