Senate panel rejects Bush's Iraq plan

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Senate opponents to President George W. Bush's plan to flood Iraq with more American combat troops ignored his pleas for a chance to prove the strategy and rejected the surge in a non-binding resolution.

The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday voted 12-9 on a no-confidence resolution slamming Bush's plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq as "not in the national interest," as the vice president vowed the plan will move ahead.

The resolution goes to the full Senate for debate as Democrats, who took control of Congress this month for the time in 12 years on a wave of anti-Iraq war sentiment, begin their uneasy cohabitation with Bush's Republican administration.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview on CNN television before the Senate panel vote, bluntly dismissed congressional objections to increasing US troop levels in Iraq: "It won't stop us."

"It would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops," he said.

The bipartisan resolution, written by committee chairman Joseph Biden, fellow Democrat Carl Levin, and Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel, criticized Bush's plan to escalate US troop strength in Iraq.

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