Senate Panel Votes Against Bush on Iraq
By Anne Flaherty
The Associated Press
Wednesday 24 January 2007
Washington - The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations
Committee dismissed President Bush's plans to increase troops
strength in Iraq on Wednesday as "not in the national interest," an
unusual wartime repudiation of the commander in chief.
The vote on the nonbinding measure was 12-9 and largely along
party lines.
"We better be damn sure we know what we're doing, all of us,
before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder," said Sen.
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the sole Republican to join 11 Democrats in
support of the measure.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the panel's chairman, said the
legislation is "not an attempt to embarrass the president.... It's an
attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake with
regard to our policy in Iraq."
The full Senate is scheduled to begin debate on the measure next
week, and Biden has said he is willing to negotiate changes in hopes
of attracting support from more Republicans.
House Democrats intend to hold a vote shortly after the Senate
acts.
Even Republicans opposed to the legislation expressed unease with
the revised policy involving a war that has lasted nearly four years,
claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops and helped Democrats
win control of Congress in last fall's elections.
"I am not confident that President Bush's plan will succeed,"
said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, senior Republican on the
committee.
But he said in advance he would vote against the measure. "It is
unclear to me how passing a nonbinding resolution that the president
has already said he will ignore will contribute to any improvement or
modification of our Iraq policy."
"The president is deeply invested in this plan, and the
deployments ... have already begun," Lugar added.
He suggested a more forceful role for Congress, and said
lawmakers must ensure the administration is "planning for
contingencies, including the failure of the Iraqi government to reach
compromises and the persistence of violence despite U.S. and Iraqi
government efforts."
Divisions over the war were on clear display as the committee met.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said he wanted to change the measure to
say flatly that the number of troops in Iraq "may not exceed the
levels" in place before Bush announced his new policy. The suggestion
failed, 15-6.
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., sought to amend the legislation to
show support for an increase troops in the Anbar province in western
Iraq, but not in Baghdad, where the sectarian violence is
particularly fierce. His proposal also fell, 17-4.
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., chastised fellow lawmakers,
accusing them of being reticent to respond to Bush's plans. He said
he would seek passage of legislation at a later date cutting off
funds for the war.
Hagel's remarks were among the most impassioned of the day, and
he was unstinting in his criticism of the White House.
"There is no strategy," he said of the Bush administration's war
management. "This is a ping pong game with American lives. These
young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in
Baghdad are not beans; they're real lives. And we better be damn sure
we know what we're doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more
Americans into that grinder."
A Vietnam veteran, he fairly lectured fellow senators not to duck
a painful debate about a war that has grown increasingly unpopular as
it has gone on. "No president of the United States can sustain a
foreign policy or a war policy without the sustained support of the
American people," Hagel said.
At least eight other Republican senators say they now back
legislative proposals registering objections to Bush's decision to
boost U.S. military strength in Iraq by 21,500 troops.
The growing list - which includes Sens. Gordon Smith, George
Voinovich and Sam Brownback - has emboldened Democrats, who are
pushing for a vote in the full Senate by next week to rebuke the
president's Iraq policy.
In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, Bush urged
skeptical members of Congress to give the plan a chance to work.
Many lawmakers remained reluctant.
"I wonder whether the clock has already run out," said Sen. Susan
Collins, R-Maine. She said she was worried that U.S. troops in Iraq
are already perceived "not as liberators but as occupiers."
Bush did get a word of support from former New York Mayor Rudy
Giuliani, one of the 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls.
"I believe we should give the president the support to do this. I
want us to be successful in Iraq," he said Wednesday on NBC's "Today"
show. "I know how important it is to the overall war on terror.
Success in Iraq means a more peaceful world for America, it means a
victory against terrorists. Failure in Iraq means a big defeat
against terrorists and the war on terror is going to be tougher for
us."
But Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., appearing on the same show, said,
"I think all of us are talking about a phased redeployment which
would leave American troops in the region to send a strong message,
not only to the Iraqi government that we want to help them, but also
to neighbors, like Iran, that we're not abandoning the field."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012407R.shtml
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