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Lugar's Words Reverberate    [
GOP Support for Iraq War Slips    [

    GOP Skepticism on Iraq Growing
    By Karen DeYoung and Shailagh Murray
    The Washington Post

    Wednesday 27 June 2007

Key Senators urge reduction in troops.

    Key Republican senators, signaling increasing GOP skepticism about President Bush's strategy in Iraq, have called for a reduction in U.S. forces and launched preemptive efforts to counter a much-awaited administration progress report due in September.

    In an unannounced speech on the Senate floor Monday night, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. military escalation begun in the spring has "very limited" prospects for success. He called on Bush to begin reducing U.S. forces. "We don't owe the president our unquestioning agreement," Lugar said.

    The harsh judgment from one of the Senate's most respected foreign-policy voices was a blow to White House efforts to boost flagging support for its war policy, and opened the door to defections by other Republicans who have supported the administration despite increasing private doubts.

    Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Bush yesterday urging the president to develop "a comprehensive plan for our country's gradual military disengagement" from Iraq. "I am also concerned that we are running out of time," he wrote.

    Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, praised Lugar's statement as "an important and sincere contribution" to the Iraq debate.

    Republican skepticism has grown steadily, if subtly, since the Senate began debating the war in February. One lawmaker who has changed his tone is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Earlier this year, McConnell helped block from a vote even a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop increase. Now, he views a change in course as a given. "I anticipate that we'll probably be going in a different direction in some way in Iraq" in September, McConnell told reporters earlier this month. "And it'll be interesting to see what the administration chooses to do."

    Indeed, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill had been hoping to stave off further defections until after a report on military and political conditions in Iraq is delivered by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker in September. However, some in the GOP fear that the White House is stalling, hoping to delay any shift in U.S. strategy until the fall. A major test will come next month, when the Senate considers a series of withdrawal-related amendments to the defense authorization bill - and Republicans such as Lugar and Voinovich will have to officially break ranks or not.

    White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday that Bush hopes "members of the House and Senate will give the Baghdad security plan a chance to unfold."

    Lugar consulted with McConnell before delivering his speech, but not with the White House, according to Lugar spokesman Andy Fisher.

    In his lengthy speech, Lugar cited several indicators that he said are working against U.S. success, including the Iraqis' inability to reach a short-term political settlement, the strain on the U.S. military, and the constraints imposed by domestic politics in Washington. Bush and his team, Lugar said, "must come to grips" with reality.

    However, he warned against a total withdrawal from Iraq. A "sustainable military posture" would reduce U.S. forces into a support role to help the Iraqi army, he said. Similarly, Voinovich called for "responsible military disengagement" from Iraq. "It is absolutely critical that we avoid being drawn into a precipitous withdrawal," he said in a strategy paper that accompanied his letter to Bush.

    Lugar first expressed concerns about the White House strategy during a private meeting that he and Warner had with Bush in the first week of January. Outlining his plans to dispatch nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq, Bush argued that military escalation would give the Iraqis time reconcile sectarian divisions. Since then, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has made no visible movement toward political reconciliation, the two senior GOP lawmakers have regularly voiced muted concern in public.

    Republicans deflected Democratic demands for troop withdrawal timelines in last month's war funding bill. But Lugar and Warner were among many GOP lawmakers who supported the inclusion of political and military benchmarks and a Sept. 15 deadline for a progress report from the administration. The legislation also required studies aimed at providing Congress with independent views on the conditions in Iraq.

    One provision, sponsored by Warner, created a commission of retired four-star officers and other military experts to independently assess whether Iraqi security forces are willing or able to end their own sectarian divisions and take over a lead role in defending their country.

    Warner said he knows that his push for the measure makes it appear that he does not trust Bush, Petraeus and Crocker to provide an honest report. "I accept that critique," he said in an interview. "But what are we to do? Be totally reliant on the executive branch for their analysis?"

    The 14-member commission, headed by retired Gen. James L. Jones, a former Marine commandant and until his retirement last year the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, held its first meeting Friday. It plans several trips to Iraq, and its report to Congress will be timed to provide an alternative to what lawmakers will hear in September from Petraeus and Crocker.

    Congress has also tasked the Government Accountability Office with assessing Iraqi progress toward political goals, including the revision of the Iraqi constitution and the passing of laws on the distribution of Iraq's oil wealth. And last week, the House voted to revive the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel Congress created last year to develop policy options.

    Bush initially rejected most of the study group's recommendations, including the setting of performance benchmarks for the Iraqi government and the opening of regional talks with Iran and Syria. If its co-chairmen, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), agree to reconstitute the group, it would provide new recommendations timed to coincide with the administration's September report.

    Although the recent war funding legislation calls for a cutoff in funds if the benchmarks are not met, Democrats note that the measure gives Bush the authority to waive that provision if he provides a "detailed justification" in writing. "Is there anybody here, based on the statements the president has made for the last five years, who doesn't know exactly what the president is going to say with respect to progress?" Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) asked during a floor debate.

    It was Petraeus who first set September as the time when he would be able to judge the success of Bush's new strategy. More than 155,000 U.S. troops are now engaged in the stepped-up effort to stem sectarian and insurgent violence in Baghdad and the areas surrounding the capital. The administration has predicted that the anticipated calm will enable Maliki's Shiite-dominated government to implement key political reforms .

    Petraeus has been a popular figure on Capitol Hill, with his words given more weight than those from the White House. "Why don't you wait and see what he says?" Bush said last month as Congress debated the funding bill. "General Petraeus picked this date; he believes that there will be enough progress one way or the other to be able to report to the American people, to give an objective assessment."

    The White House is hoping that Iraqi negotiators will, at least, have an agreed-upon package of new drafts of oil legislation by mid-July, when Bush owes Congress an interim report.

    Maliki's office announced last Wednesday that it had granted the government committee that is writing the constitutional revisions a third extension in its deadline, until late July. Negotiations on a new de-Baathification law are reportedly moribund.

    The government, after expressions of outrage from the U.S. Congress, has indicated that the parliament is prepared to cancel a scheduled two-month summer recess due to begin next month. But none of the benchmark legislation is ready for its consideration.

    Democrats have indicated that nothing they hear in September is likely to convince them that Bush's Iraq strategy is succeeding. They plan to offer several Iraq amendments to a Defense Department authorization bill scheduled for debate after the July 4 recess, including a March 31, 2008, funding cutoff. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Democrats will push "very, very hard" for the measure.

    Reid yesterday hailed Lugar's speech as a "potential turning point" in the debate, adding that he looks forward to Lugar putting "his words into action by delivering the responsible end to the war that the American people demand."

    Lugar made clear in his speech that he will oppose efforts to tie Bush's hands in the upcoming legislation. Instead, he called on the White House to take the lead in changing strategy before the polarized Washington debate "increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East."

    Go to Original

    Lugar's Words Reverberate
    By Manu Raju
    The Hill

    Wednesday 27 June 2007

    A senior Republican's sharp criticism of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war has emboldened anti-war activists, who are planning to ratchet up pressure on the Senate to take a more hard-line approach during the debate next month over defense authorization legislation.

    Six-term Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the ranking member and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a floor speech Monday night that the troop surge Bush announced in January has not shown signs of success, and that the White House should immediately begin a process to withdraw troops from Iraq.

    "In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond," Lugar said on the floor.

    Lugar's position feeds into a new campaign that anti-war activists formulated at a meeting in Chicago over the weekend.

    The anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice, which represents 1,400 groups nationwide, agreed that pressuring the Democratic-controlled Congress to be more assertive against Bush's war policy would be its top priority this summer.

    The Senate is expected to push back debate over the war until after the Fourth of July recess - another development that has incensed anti-war activists, who argue that Congress has been slow to challenge Bush on the Iraq war. But during the recess week, activists say, they will be highlighting Lugar's position to organize protests at offices of lawmakers who may be swayed.

    According to attendees of the Chicago meeting, some groups wanted to push Congress to cut off funds immediately, but other activists said that doing so would allow critics to portray that effort as leaving vulnerable troops in harm's way.

    Some leading groups are eyeing the defense authorization bill for the Senate to add language calling for a full withdrawal by year's end, and are content with funding up to $10 billion.

    Lugar's Monday night speech gave hope that efforts to attach withdrawal provisions to the $649 billion fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill would gain steam among Senate Republicans.

    "Our strategy for this summer is to take advantage of reality on the ground in Iraq," said Gael Murphy, co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink. "And Lugar's statement is extremely helpful towards that direction."

    "It marks the beginning of the end of the Republican stonewalling on Iraq," said Nita Chaudhary, a campaigner for the liberal group MoveOn.org.

    Lugar said yesterday that his Senate Republican colleagues, "by and large," have been "generally supportive and very pleased that I gave the speech and [are] eager to talk some more about it."

    Publicly, Republicans were mixed about Lugar's statement. Most said they would wait until Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, reports to Congress in September. But Lugar said Washington should not wait until September's report, which he said would likely show little success. An interim report is due July 15.

    Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a supporter of the troop surge and the war, said he would wait until the September report to reassess the Iraq situation. But he added that when Lugar speaks, "everybody tends to listen."

    White House spokesman Tony Snow said the administration takes "seriously his point of view because he is a serious guy," but argued that Lugar's announcement was not surprising. "He's somebody who has had reservations."

    Lugar said the White House contacted him afterward to hold a meeting on the issue, but would not say how or whether he plans to address the war through the legislative process.

    "I think we could have some legislative responses, but I'm not prepared to draft them or suggest them off my head today," Lugar said. "But others are interested in working with me."

    Indeed, Lugar's speech does not necessarily translate into a newly reliable vote for Democrats seeking to end the war in Iraq.
The senator said yesterday that he has not embraced any of the pending bills to require a timetable for withdrawal, and that he has not made any plans on how he would vote when expected amendments to end the war are offered during debate over the defense authorization bill.

    Still, Democrats and their anti-war allies saw Lugar's speech as a turning point in the Senate's debate over the war.

    "He's obviously a strong voice, and when his voice supports a change in direction, it could have a very significant impact," said Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.). "Whether that translates into votes on particular matters, either his vote or others, is obviously an important question, too."

    There are at least four Iraq-related Democratic amendments that could be offered on Iraq, including one by Levin mandating a troop withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days of his plan's enactment. Other amendments would set troop readiness standards; seek to prohibit spending on a future military presence in Iraq after April 2008; and revoke the 2002
congressional authorization for the war.

    Some Republicans are starting to talk about their strategy for the defense bill, including Sen. John Warner, the senior Republican from Virginia, who has been increasingly critical of the war. Warner said he would withhold "thoughts of his own" until debate over the defense authorization bill had concluded.

    "I anticipate as the authorization bill comes to the floor next week that I, Senator Levin, Senator [John] McCain (R-Ariz.) and others will be engaged in a very thorough dialogue on the basic tenets raised by Senator Lugar," said Warner. He added that this authorization bill would be the most challenging of the 29 he has worked on throughout his career.

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    Elana Schor contributed to this story.

    Go to Original

    GOP Support for Iraq War Slips
    By Anne Flaherty
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 26 June 2007

    Republican support for the Iraq war is slipping by the day. After four years of combat and more than 3,560 U.S. deaths, two Republican senators previously reluctant to challenge President Bush on the war announced they could no longer support the deployment of 157,000 troops and asked the president to begin bringing them home.

    "We must not abandon our mission, but we must begin a transition where the Iraqi government and its neighbors play a larger role in stabilizing Iraq," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Bush.

    Voinovich, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released his letter Tuesday - one day after Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel's top Republican, said in a floor speech that Bush's strategy was not working.

    "The longer we delay the planning for a redeployment, the less likely it is to be successful," said Lugar, who plans to meet later this week with Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser.

    Lugar and Voinovich are not the first GOP members to call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Gordon Smith of Oregon made similar remarks earlier this year. But their public break is significant because it raises the possibility that Senate Democrats could muster the 60 votes needed to pass legislation that would call for Bush to bring troops home.

    Their remarks also are an early warning shot to a lame duck president that GOP support for the war is thinning. The administration is not expected until September to say whether a recent troop buildup in Iraq is working.

    "Everyone should take note, especially the administration," said Snowe, R-Maine, noting Lugar's senior position within the GOP. "It certainly indicates the tide is turning."

    Lugar told reporters Tuesday that he does not expect the fall assessment to be conclusive and would only fuel sentiment among lawmakers that Congress should intervene with legislation to end the war.

    "The president has an opportunity now to bring about a bipartisan foreign policy," Lugar said. "I don't think he'll have that option very long."

    The White House on Tuesday appealed to members for more patience on the war in Iraq.

    "We hope that members of the House and Senate will give the Baghdad security plan a chance to unfold," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

    Snow also said Lugar was a thoughtful man and that his remarks came as no surprise.

    "We've known that he's had reservations about the policy for some time," he said.

    Republican support for the war has declined steadily since last year's elections, mirroring public poll numbers. In an AP-Ipsos poll earlier this month, 28 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, down 5 percentage points in a month.

    Earlier this year, Voinovich and Lugar said they doubted the troop buildup in Iraq would work. But they declined to back a resolution expressing opposition to the troop increase because they said it would have no practical effect. The two senators also refused Democratic proposals to set a timetable for troop withdrawals.

    Other Republicans, including Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Susan Collins of Maine, expressed similar concerns about Iraq but recently have said they will wait until the September assessment before calling for a change in course, including possible troop withdrawals.

    Voinovich and Lugar said they still would not support a timetable for troop withdrawals and are unlikely to switch their vote. But softer alternative proposals are in the works that could possibly attract their support.

    After the Fourth of July recess, "you'll be hearing a number of statements from other (Republican) colleagues," predicted Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a longtime skeptic of the war strategy.

    Warner spokesman John Ullyot said the senator is drafting a legislative proposal on the war, but declined to discuss the details. The measure would likely be offered as an amendment to the 2008 defense authorization bill on the floor next month.

    In the meantime, Democrats say they will try again to set an end date on the war and cut off funding for combat.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called Lugar's speech "brilliant" and "courageous" and said it would later be noted in the history books as a turning point in the war.

    "But that will depend on whether more Republicans take the stand that Sen. Lugar took," Reid added.

    Also on Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted in favor of confirming Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as Bush's personal adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pete Geren as Army secretary. A full Senate vote on the nominations has not been scheduled.

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