Republicans Questioning Bush's Iraq Policies
By KIMBERLY HEFLING
news.aol.com
AP
WASHINGTON (Sept. 12) - Any other time one would expect Republican lawmaker Curt Weldon to be an unwavering supporter of President George W. Bush's Iraq policy. After all, just this summer the Pennsylvania congressman was saying the jury remains out on whether Iraq still holds weapons of mass destruction.
But Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is desperate to hold onto his seat in the Philadelphia suburbs. He is sounding more like a Democrat - and the increasing number of dissident Republicans who are talking about a timetable for bringing the troops home.
The 10-term incumbent is preparing this week to file a nonbinding resolution that says a milestone-based approach with criteria determined by military officers should be used by Bush to determine when troops should be withdrawn from Iraq.
Weldon's proposal is not as far-reaching as some that Democrats have proposed, but it's still questioning Bush policies. He is one of many Republicans facing a tough November election who are giving voice to the idea that the war is not going well.
Their comments two months before the Nov. 7 general election could be politically tricky. They come as the Bush administration advocates a hard-line, for-us-or-against-us stance on the war. Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that someone who supports withdrawing troops "validates the strategy of the terrorists."
Polls show that about six out of 10 Americans think invading Iraq in 2003 was a mistake.
Among the Republicans speaking out:
· Rep. Christopher Shays said the United States should consider setting a timeline for troop withdrawals. Shays said he hopes to offer a specific time frame sometime after congressional hearings on Iraq that were begun this week by a House panel he chairs.
· Tom Kean Jr., a Republican challenging Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez in New Jersey, has said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should resign and that Bush has made "horrendous mistakes."
· Pat Tiberi, of Ohio, said he cannot defend how the president laid out the need for going to Iraq and that new leadership is needed at the Pentagon.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is not up for re-election, on Sunday told a crowd that the war is the right thing even though "I know Iraq is a mess and we have screwed up seven ways from Sunday."
Even Republican voters are experiencing Iraq fatigue and want to hear more than a stay-the-course message, said Stephen Cimbala, a political science professor at Penn State University.
The candidates are "wanting to put some pragmatic distance between them and Bush, not on the ends and goals of policy, but on the means for bringing the Iraq war to a conclusion because they want to give voters some hope, and they recognize that the poll numbers on Iraq are so bad it's an albatross on the neck of incumbents," Cimbala said.
By challenging the administration, however, they risk looking like flip-floppers. In addition, they potentially create disunity in the party and make it more awkward for national Republican leaders to support them, said John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College who once worked as a Republican analyst.
"They are making the argument that the national Republicans pose as the reason to reject the Democrats," Pitney said.
Bush has said that troop levels must be determined by military commanders on the ground and that troops will remain until security conditions improve.
Weldon's press secretary said the congressman's proposal goes beyond that and depoliticizes the timing for withdrawals by placing the decision in the hands of military commanders.
"This calls on the president to be more clear about something that's already being done," said John Tomaszewski, the press secretary. "This calls on the president to explain more clearly to the American people something that constituents in the congressman's district and people and citizens across the country have been talking about. That is, what is our plan? When will this end?"
Weldon is being challenged by Joe Sestak, a Democrat who served as a Navy vice admiral. Sestak has said troops should be withdrawn by the end of next year so the nation can focus on other worldwide security threats. He said Monday that Weldon's proposal is an election-year ploy.
"Where has he been for the last three and a half years that only now does he come up with something? Where's his courage when he should have been standing up before?" Sestak asked.
Weldon said in June said the jury was still out on whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though the White House has acknowledged that claims that weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were based on U.S. intelligence later proven false.
He recently told CNN that when it comes to terrorists, "We either fight them there or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here."
But he is also a political maverick. He was one of the first Republicans to defend Democratic Rep. John Murtha, a fellow Pennsylvanian who caused an uproar in November when he said troops should be withdrawn from Iraq.
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