Dan Rather

When President Bush vetoed the recent Iraq spending bill that included a timetable for mandatory withdrawal of U.S. troops, he cited as one of his reasons the "artificial deadline" it would have imposed on the American military commitment in Iraq. But as events last week have shown, the president may have vanquished one deadline with a stroke of his pen, but others remain.

One potential deadline was raised by President Bush himself in his public explanation of the veto: "And as General Petraeus has said, it will be at least the end of summer before we can assess the impact of this operation. Congress ought to give General Petraeus' plan a chance to work."

Though it might not have been the president's intention, Congress seems intent on taking him very literally on this point. Gen. Petraeus has cited September as an early point for assessing the success of the increased U.S. troop levels in Iraq, so Democratic and Republican lawmakers have seized on the early fall as a benchmark for continued support of the war. Most noteworthy have been the voices from within the president's own party, which include Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican whip, and Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minorityleader. "By the time we get to September or October," Boehner said this week, "members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it's not, then what's Plan B?"

Limited patience

While Republicans have sent these signals that their patience has limits, House Democrats have been working on new legislation that would fund the war through July, and then require an additional vote — based on progress reports from the White House — to provide funding until the end of September, which is also the end of the government's fiscal year.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, another deadline is at hand. May 15 is the date set for an Iraqi parliamentary committee to deliver its recommendations for reforming the Iraqi constitution. This process has already led the parliament's minority Sunni bloc to threaten a walkout if the constitution is not changed to prevent Iraq from splitting into autonomous Shi'ite, Kurdish and Sunni regions. And even if a settlement is reached on this contentious issue, the thorny questions of how to divide Iraq's oil and other resources remain.

With the growing consensus that a military solution cannot work without political progress, it seems safe to say that the Bush administration does not want to see this parliamentary deadline pass without results - a message that was delivered, and likely with some force, by Vice-President Dick Cheney during his visit to Iraq. The White House has also called on the Iraqi parliament to put aside its two-month summer vacation in order to settle these lingering constitutional questions and other barriers to reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects and ethnicities.

Will U.S. forces remain in Iraq through the spring of 2008, as some commanders on the ground have recommended in connection with the increase in troop levels?

Will they stay as long as President Bush remains in office, as the president is reported in The Washington Post to have privately assured the Saudi Arabian government? Or will congressional Republicans join with Democrats to force a withdrawal before then? Whatever the answer, high-level diplomacy in the Middle East and a lobbying campaign in Congress by the Iraqi prime minister's national-security adviser make it clear that the White House is feeling a new sense of urgency concerning Iraq, the president's veto power notwithstanding.