Bush too dismissive of Congress on Iraq: Hagel Sun Mar 25, 2:47 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush should stop being dismissive of opposition in Congress to the Iraq war and it is time that lawmakers set boundaries for U.S. involvement, a Republican senator said on Sunday.
"I think Congress is going to play a role now like we've not played before," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), a critic of Bush's Iraq policy from his own Republican Party.
Bush's weekend radio address in which he threatened to veto emergency spending legislation for the Iraq war if it included a timetable for withdrawing troops was "astounding to me -- saying to the Congress, in effect, you don't belong in this, I'm in charge of Iraq," Hagel of Nebraska said.
The House of Representatives on Friday voted to impose a September 1, 2008, deadline for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops as part of legislation providing more than $124 billion in emergency spending mostly for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the Senate considers its version of the war-spending bill this week, Hagel said he planned to propose a measure with Sen. James Webb (news, bio, voting record), a Virginia Democrat, that would have the "force of law in the future involvement of our military" in Iraq, focused on deployment, redeployment, training, and equipment.
Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq was not the solution, Hagel, who is weighing a bid for the White House in the 2008 elections, said.
"I am opposed to the president's further escalation of American military involvement. We are undermining our interests in the Middle East, we are undermining our military, we're undermining the confidence of people around the world in what we're doing," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week" program.
"We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort," he said. "It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement." |
