Democrats to Press Bush to Redeploy Troops in Iraq
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
Published: November 12, 2006
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — Leading Democrats said today that they would press the Bush administration to begin redeploying troops in Iraq within months — one said as early as March — but the White House said that while it was “open to fresh ideas,” the notion of any fixed timetable was not one of them.
“We need to begin a phased redeployment of our forces from Iraq in four to six months,” said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the likely next chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
But the Bush administration said it remained opposed to timetables.
“I don’t think we’re going to be receptive to the notion that there’s a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out, because that could be a true disaster for the Iraqi people,” the White House chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, said.
Meantime, the White House said it would again ask the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, but it also indicated that it planned to take no extraordinary measures like naming him acting or deputy ambassador to keep him there if Democrats again moved to block him, as they vowed to do today.
And as Americans and others weighed the impact of the freshly elected Democratic majority, the party’s leaders sought to send reassuring signals that they planned change but no abrupt policy lurches.
The top Senate Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that while his fellow lawmakers would re-examine a tax structure that they say unfairly favors the wealthiest, they did not plan to do so for at least six months to a year.
Howard Dean, the Democratic national chairman, even cautioned against expecting the tax cuts that many Democrats say they want for the middle class. The Democrats support a budget-balancing approach, he said, asserting that the federal budget deficit has been understated by $100 billion.
Mr. Reid also said the monitoring of some Americans’ phone calls might be a necessary part of the fight against terrorism, “We must do it within the confines of the Constitution,” he said, presumably pointing to new efforts to restrict the government’s controversial surveillance programs.
Mr. Levin called for a rapid start to troop redeployment in Iraq a day before President Bush is to meet with a bipartisan study group seeking a way forward in Iraq and two days before Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Bush’s foremost ally in Iraq, is to confer with the same group via video linkup.
The panel is chaired by James A. Baker III, secretary of state under the first President George Bush, and Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman.
As the Iraq Study Group moves closer to providing much-anticipated recommendations, Democrats are attempting to use their new leverage to influence the debate.
The Pentagon, too, is undertaking a broad review of Iraq strategy, under General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Levin said on the ABC News program “This Week” that it was important that the Iraqi government knows that the United States has no “open ended” commitment to shore it up, a comment later seconded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the likely incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Reid also argued for redeployment, saying, “I think it should start within the next few months.” But he said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” that he was “absolutely not” in favor of a specific withdrawal date; deployment decisions should come from military leaders in Iraq, he said.
Redeployment, under some proposals, would begin by pulling American troops out of harm’s way within Iraq; as Iraqi forces took over, Americans would begin moving out of the country.
Mr. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, said that the president was open to all recommendations and ready to make sensible adjustments, but that “the ultimate goal remains the same, which is success in Iraq.”
Still, sounding the more accommodating tone that top officials have struck since the Democrats’ election victory, he said on CNN: “The president’s open to fresh ideas here. Everybody’s reviewing the situation.”
In another sign of Democratic caution, Mr. Dean said that while former Senator George McGovern had been invited to meet with the Congressional Progressive Caucus — a group of about 60 House members, most of them Democrats — to discuss his proposal for a full withdrawal by June, that was “probably not the way it’s going to work.”
Mr. Dean argued on “Fox News Sunday” against a withdrawal from Iraq that would leave the northern part of the country vulnerable to attacks by Turkish troops pursuing the ethnic Kurdish fighters. A Turkish invasion, he said, would be the “worst thing” that could happen.
Republicans, meanwhile, are concerned that the Democrats will use their new power in Congress to hold a series of aggressive hearings on past policies, which they contend would undermine the bipartisan spirit that Democrats and the president say they are ready to pursue.
But Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on CNN that while there would be such inquiries, “we’re not going to hold a whole raft of hearings pointing a finger back at 2001.”
Democrats say they will pursue other measures to insist on accountability. One of these would be to insist on continued financial support for the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
Many lawmakers, including Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, supported legislation to keep the office in place. But the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Duncan Hunter of California, stripped the extension from a major spending bill.
Democrats now say they will push to restore it, with the help of Republicans like Ms. Collins.
Regarding the Bolton nomination, several Democrats said they saw no way he would be confirmed. “Send someone new up, Mr. President,” Mr. Biden said. Republicans lack the 60 votes they need to force a vote on the nominee.
Mr. Bolton is now serving as United Nations ambassador through a recess appointment from Mr. Bush, who exercised the prerogative to name Mr. Bolton while Congress was out of session in August 2005. That appointment will expire when Congress returns in January.
The White House chief of staff, Mr. Bolten, said the president had full faith in Mr. Bolton. But asked about reports that the White House might seek an alternative route to leaving Mr. Bolton in place if he cannot be confirmed — changing his title, for example — Mr. Bolten replied: “I don’t know about that. Our effort is going to be to try to get him confirmed in the ordinary course.”
As for Robert M. Gates’s nomination to succeed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bolten brushed aside the grumbling of some Republicans that the party might have saved control of the Senate and limited its losses in the House if Mr. Rumsfeld had been ousted sooner.
But he also said that if Mr. Bush had not settled on Mr. Gates — and Mr. Gates had not accepted the appointment —- no change would probably have taken place.
“If Bob Gates had turned out to be the wrong guy,” he said, “I do not expect that the president would’ve replaced Secretary Rumsfeld.”
Mr. Biden said he was likely to vote to confirm Mr. Gates, who was director of central intelligence under Mr. Bush’s father. “I know he wasn’t of the Rumsfeld school,” the senator said on “This Week” on ABC. “And to put it very, very bluntly, as long as he’s not there, Rumsfeld is there.”
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