Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. Today is Tuesday April 24th. I'm your host Anastasia

Yaglova. Congressional Democrats are ignoring Bush's veto threat, expecting a narrow approval in the House and Senate

by the end of the week for their $124 billion war spending bill.

The bill would order the administration to begin phasing out troops starting on October 1st,

according to a timetable that includes progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government. For commentary we have Cato's

director of foreign policy studies, Chris Preble. What are your thoughts on the

hundred and twenty four billion dollar spending bill? Well first of all it's not a big surprise that the Democratic

leadership in the House and Senate managed to reconcile the two bills. They did

take out some of the pork barrel spending that was included particularly in the

House bill and I think they have presented

to the president a relatively straightforward proposal that funds the troops but includes

timetable tied to the goals that the Iraqi government is

demonstrating. So the president and Secretary Gates have said that they

want the Iraqi government to make progress towards reconciliation and I think the bill is consistent with the

message the administration has been sending both to the Iraqis and to the American

public.

Is a timetable for withdrawal right now really a good idea when we're nowhere near winning?

Well the question becomes how likely are we to be winning a year from now or two years from now

or three years from now?

As every military leader including including General Petraeus, has said what

is happening in Iraq and the challenge in Iraq is primarily political, not military.

It is about the Iraqi leadership and Iraqi public coming to terms with the changes that have taken place

...