Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden said President George W. Bush's ``failed policy'' in Iraq, not congressional opposition to the war, is emboldening the enemies of the U.S.
Biden, a Delaware Democrat who is running for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, said there are no more than 20 members of the Senate who support Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq to bolster security.
``It's not the American people or the United States Congress who are emboldening the enemy,'' he said on ABC's ``This Week'' program. ``It's the failed policy of this president, going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely, going to war without enough troops.''
Biden's panel last week approved a resolution saying the addition of troops is ``not in the national interest.'' Some senior Republican lawmakers, such as Senators John Warner of Virginia and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have joined in the opposition to the deployment of more soldiers and Marines to supplement the 132,000 troops already in Iraq. Warner is offering a competing resolution using milder language saying Congress ``disagrees'' with the president's plan.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have warned in speeches and interviews that failing to quash insurgents and terrorists in Iraq would create instability in the Middle East and strengthen those who want to attack the U.S. at home.
Test of Will
``They believe firmly, because they talk about it all the time, that they can, in fact, break the will of the American people and change our policies if they just kill enough Americans, or kill enough innocent civilians,'' Cheney said in an interview with Newsweek magazine, according to a transcript provided by the White House.
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations panel, who voted against the resolution, said on the ABC program that such congressional action isn't ``helpful'' because it shows ``disarray'' over Iraq in the U.S.
Lugar said that, while he has doubts about the strategy of adding more troops, ``there's movement'' on the security and diplomatic fronts that might be disrupted by dissent.
He said Congress should ``give voice'' to the public's unease with the war and push the administration to consult more with lawmakers without trying to usurp the president's authority as commander in chief.
Protests
The anti-war sentiment of voters was demonstrated yesterday when thousands of people protested in Washington. Most polls show widespread opposition to the war. In a Bloomberg News/Los Angeles Times poll conducted Jan. 13-16, 60 percent of U.S. adults said they oppose Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq.
Lugar was joined in opposing a congressional resolution by Senator Joseph Lieberman, who won re-election in Connecticut as an independent after losing in the Democratic primary because of his support for the war.
``It will discourage our troops who we're asking to carry out this new plan and it will encourage the enemy,'' Lieberman said on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``War is a test of wills and you don't want your enemy to be given any hope.''
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, his party's leader in the chamber, advanced the idea of a resolution setting out benchmarks for progress in Iraq without any timetable. Still, he said, the patience of lawmakers is wearing thin.
``I think I can pretty well speak for virtually all Republican senators when I say this is the last chance for the Iraqis to step up and do their part,'' he said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program.
Iraq's Capacity
Specter, interviewed on the CBS program, said he ``cannot support sending additional troops to Iraq.'' He declined to say whether he would vote for a resolution opposing the troop increase.
``The plan is not working because it requires Iraq to do some things which Iraq doesn't have the will or the capability to do and that is to stifle the sectarian disagreements and also to secure Baghdad,'' Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said.
The level of sectarian violence in Iraq has risen since the bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine last February. Shiite and Sunni militias have made Baghdad a battleground that has killed thousands. A girls' school in a mostly Sunni area of Baghdad came under mortar fire today, killing five pupils, the Associated Press reported. U.S. backed Iraqi troops engaged in a daylong battle with militants near Najaf, leaving 250 insurgents dead, and two car bombs killed 11 people in Kirkuk, AP reported.
Withdraw Troops
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, in an interview on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' program, said today that Bush ``will be forced to withdraw troops from Iraq'' beginning in late summer because of domestic opposition.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, emphasized the importance of forcing lawmakers to vote regardless of whether they support the Bush administration's current policy in Iraq ``because it puts the American Congress on record.''
He said on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program that Iraq's warring Shiites and Sunnis must understand that Americans aren't always going to be there as a ``backdrop.''
Bush's war strategy isn't the only target of congressional Democrats. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, whose campaign for office focused on his opposition to the war, said he wants lawmakers to investigate how the federal government awarded contracts to help rebuild Iraq.
``I'm very concerned about how reconstruction funds have been used -- more than $30 billion,'' he said on the CBS program. ``A lot of it's gone to sweetheart deals to American companies. A lot of it's unaccounted for.''
``We're going to really go at it,'' Webb said |
