In a March 22 press conference, Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi warned American policy makers that a premature American withdrawal from Iraq could be disastrous. “Many of the Democrats are now pushing the White House for a quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq,” Hashemi said to The Middle East Times. “This is not going to benefit either Iraqi or Western interests. If troops are pulled out on short notice, it will create a security vacuum in Iraq that cannot be filled by troops that have not been trained well enough and are not available in sufficient numbers.”

“I don’t think that anything the Iraqi government says will affect our policy at all,” Assistant Professor of Political Science Robert Duncan said. “The Bush administration will use it for propaganda purposes, but it’s not going to change the attitude of Congress. It’s not going to change the attitude of the American people. The last time I remember reading an opinion poll, the Iraqi people wanted us out of there too.”

In the week since Hashemi’s statement, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill that approves $122 billion for the continued war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but includes clauses strongly urging the President to begin removing U.S. troops within 120 days of the bill’s passage or by March 2008.

The House of Representatives recently passed a similar bill with a differing exit deadline date that must be aligned with the Senate’s exit deadline before being passed on to President Bush.

Bush has threatened to veto any law that sets a timetable for an American withdrawal from Iraq, which he argues would be tantamount to tying the hands of his military commanders.

“Obviously, the administration would vehemently oppose and ultimately veto any legislation that looked like what was described today,” said Dan Bartlett, White House Counsel, about an earlier version of the bill, to CNN.

Because both laws were passed along partisan lines, it is unlikely that either the House or the Senate could overturn a presidential veto.

Despite this fact, the House and Senate votes constitute “one of the boldest challenges yet to the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq,” according to BBC News’ Washington-based correspondent.

According to Hashemi, pulling American troops out of Iraq prematurely would only increase the violence and anarchy that already grips much of Iraq.

“We need the coalition forces to stay in Iraq until our national troops are qualified enough to look after security,” Hashemi said. “They are, at the time being, not.”

“Are (American soldiers) preventing chaos and civil war now? No! Its going on all around them,” Duncan said. “Perhaps they provide some modicum of security. But, if (their presence) was working, there wouldn’t be suicide bombers. There wouldn’t be death squads. It’s not stopping. It’s getting worse.”

So far, 3,243 U.S. military personnel have been killed in the war in Iraq. According to the Web site, Iraq Body Count, as many as 66,280 Iraqi civilians have been killed so far. At least 400 people were killed in sectarian violence last week alone.