Fresh off the recent congressional testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker—where the subject of Iraq’s massive oil revenues and its willingness to contribute them to its reconstruction was raised repeatedly—Congressman Dave Reichert has joined with another moderate house Republican, Chris Shays of Connecticut, to offer a bill that would force Iraq to either begin contributing funds to its own reconstruction or face the prospect of all subsequent US aid coming in the form of loans.

From the text of the bill (.PDF WARNING):

It is the sense of the House of Representatives that funding for future Iraq reconstruction initiatives and training of Iraqi security forces should come from Iraqi revenues, and if the government of Iraq cannot properly allocate and spend its revenues, any funding from the United States to Iraq for reconstruction and security training should be provided as a loan to Iraq.

The problem? The bill is at this point nothing more than a “sense of the House” bill, wherein Congress is allowed to voice an unbinding opinion. Or, as Darcy Burner spokesman Sandeep Kaushik described it, the bill is “nothing more than a sternly worded letter.”

“Congressman Reichert is trying to blur the lines on Iraq. His actual record in crystal clear,” Kaushik said, “he was 100% for Bush, 100% for the surge.”

While calls to Congressman Reichert’s office have not yet been returned, Reichert Chief of Staff Mike Shields told the Seattle Times’ David Postman yesterday:

Further, Dave [Reichert] cosponsored legislation to make the ISG recommendations law in the House. How is this “empty platitudes?” Her plan calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops. Recently the Democrat Co-Chairman of the Iraq Study Group, Lee Hamilton, flat out said he thought that was a bad idea. Her plan then says we should pump more U.S. taxpayer dollars into the black hole that our leaving will create. This announcement by Reichert amounts to the opposite of that: keep troops there to provide security, and force Iraq to stand up its economy and pay its own way. That’s a big difference in the two approaches.

Whatever Reichert’s opinion on the findings of the Iraq study group—and previous interviews suggest Reichert might not have been as enthused with it as his campaign is now claiming he was—the battle to define Reichert’s record on Iraq will be one of the larger flash points of the 2008 congressional rematch.

Back to the new Reichert bill itself, two competing proposals from the right and left have sprung up as well, both of which would be binding.

From the right, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican from California, is offering a bill that essentially would call for a complete pull out from Iraq if the Iraqi government is unwilling to fund its own reconstruction. From the left, Democratic moderates in the Senate are pushing for a bill that would require that Iraq pay for the fuel costs incurred by US forces.

I’ll update when I hear more from the Reichert camp.