President Bush last night successfully saw off a Senate vote of no confidence in his plan to send extra troops to Iraq, delaying a showdown between Congress and the White House over the war.

The vote came hours after he asked Congress for $624 billion (£319 billion) for the Pentagon for 2008.

Last night the Republican leadership loyal to Mr Bush blocked a full debate of a resolution opposing the President’s Iraq surge plan. It needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to proceed to a full debate, but received only 49.

The vote signalled that Mr Bush, despite deep misgivings among Republicans over his war strategy and the outright opposition of at least 10 Republican senators, is still, in the short-term at least, able to keep enough of his party in line. Many Republican senators who oppose the surge still balked at outright defection.

Democrats vowed to find a way to pass a vote of no confidence in the new surge policy and it is likely that Mr Bush has merely delayed a Senate vote.

John Warner, the Republican veteran who drafted the bi-partisan resolution with Carl Levin, a Democrat, is a powerful and respected voice in the Senate. If he chooses to continue negotiations over his resolution, he has a good chance of eventually prevailing.

Last night’s vote did not preclude a full debate later this week, but it signalled that the resolution will fail to garner the 60 votes necessary to block a Republican filibuster.

The rancorous debate between senators has played out on television networks in recent days and its consideration in the Senate set up the first big congressional examination of Mr Bush’s war policy since the invasion nearly four years ago.

Mr Warner’s resolution is nonbinding on Mr Bush and would have had no impact on his decision to send an additional 21,500 combat troops to Iraq.

However, its passage would have emboldened opponents of the war, and a growing Demo-crat-led campaign to end the conflict, possibly with moves later this year to cut off funds.

Earlier Mr Bush responded to criticism from Iraqi Shia Muslims that he had been too slow in implementing the surge after the worst suicide bombing of the war on Saturday claimed 130 lives at a Shia market.

Mr Bush said that his new Iraq commander, Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, was on his way to Baghdad and added: “We’re in the process of implementing that plan. We’d like to do it as quickly as possible.”

In Baghdad Iraqi troops and police moved on to the streets in noticeably greater numbers yesterday, marking the onset of the long-awaited security crack-down.

Roadblocks and checkpoints were set up in the east of the city, on approaches to the Shia stronghold of Sadr City.

The Iraqi general officially leading the joint US-Iraqi security operation, Operation Imposing Justice, officially took charge.

Lieutenant-General Abboud Gambar, a Shia in his early sixties, was decorated by Saddam Hussein for defending Fialaka Island, Kuwait, at the start of the 1991 Gulf War, and imprisoned briefly by US forces after it.

Insurgents killed at least 29 people in bomb and mortar attacks across the capital yesterday, 15 of them by a car bomb as they queued to fill propane cooking canisters.

However, with most of the extra US surge troops still to arrive in country, US and Iraqi officials issued a warning that the operation would not be rolled out all at once.

Major-General William Cald-well, the US military spokesman in Iraq, called for patience.

The costs

$70bn allocated to the War on Terror for 2007. Bush proposes an extra $93bn this year and $141.7bn next
$9.7bn sought to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces
$661.9bn total funding for War on Terror, 2001-08 if Congress approves the budget
$548.7bn cost of Vietnam War, in 2006 dollars

Source: Christian Science Monitor, US Government Budget

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