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Political warfare for Bush
12/01/2007 14:34 - (SA)
Washington - President George W Bush faces political warfare with the US congress over his plan to send more troops to Iraq, with even legislators from his Republican Party resisting the strategy.
Bush and top aides came under withering criticism on Thursday as they launched a hard sell to convince a nation weary of the war - which has claimed more than 3 000 US lives - that this final bid to send 21 500 more soldiers to Iraq can work.
The president appeared with US troops in Fort Benning, Georgia, to argue that the revised plan was "our best chance for success", while several of his top aides testified in congress, now controlled by the opposition Democrats.
Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who heads to the Middle East on Friday to sell the new US plan, endured a fearsome grilling before leaving at senate foreign relations committee.
Defence secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairperson general Peter Pace also faced tough questions when they testified before the House Armed Services Committee.
The new Iraq policy "represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, if it is carried out", said senator Chuck Hagel, a member of Bush's own Republican Party, commenting on the president's speech.
'It's ... morally wrong'
"To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives, to be put in the middle of a civil war, is wrong," said Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran. "It's ... morally wrong. It's tactically, strategically, militarily wrong."
Another Republican, senator Norm Coleman, said "the cost is too great" in terms of US lives to support the Bush plan.
Democrat Joseph Biden ripped the Bush strategy as "a tragic mistake".
"The result will be the loss of more American lives and our military stretched to the breaking point with little prospect of success," he said.
Rice defended the Bush administration's reliance on the much-derided regime of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which has failed to meet past US demands for robust action.
"I think he knows that his government is, in a sense, on borrowed time," she said.
Ultimately symbolic
Democrat Barack Obama told Rice about testimony in June by then-US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, who said that Maliki had six months to bring the sectarian violence under control or Iraq would face a crisis.
"Six months have passed. The sectarian violence has worsened," Obama said. "What leverage do we have that would provide us some assurance that six months from now, you will not be sitting before us again saying, 'Well, it didn't work'?"
Rice said the Maliki government would have to meet certain benchmarks in the next months.
"Or else what?" Obama asked.
"Or this plan ... is not going to work," Rice answered.
Congress has no direct say on sending more troops to Iraq: Under the US constitution the president is the military commander-in-chief, and the executive branch is in charge of US foreign policy.
Congress however is in charge of the budgetary process and have oversight responsibilities. They could withhold funds for US contractors in Iraq, or hold back money from projects the president wants, or hold hearings - as they are doing - and ask Bush officials tough questions.
They could also withhold funds for US troops - a move that Bush is gambling they will find too politically risky to take.
Democrats said they would hold votes on the Bush plan, which would increase pressure on the president and further undercut his support in congress, but ultimately be symbolic.
- AFP
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