Connecticut Post: State Democrats scoff at Bush plan
WASHINGTON — President Bush's upbeat assessment of the Iraq war and an announced plan to begin withdrawing some troops before Christmas drew a sharp rebuke from Connecticut Democrats in Congress who claim it is simply more of the same.
"Moving us in 10 months to where we were 10 months ago is not progress. It is the very definition of status quo," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. "Not only is the president not offering us anything new; he's insulting our intelligence."
Iraqi leaders have failed to take the necessary steps toward political reconciliation, and "staying the course" only serves to postpone that effort, said Rep. Chris Murphy, D-5. "The president's plan to keep the same number of troops on the ground as he had before the surge doesn't solve our fundamental problem in Iraq," he said.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, however, said he supported Bush's assessment that enough progress has been made to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq to at least pre-surge levels.
"I would certainly recommend that we not stop there but continue to bring back more troops each and every month because Iraqis are getting more capable," he said.
Bush spoke Thursday evening from the Oval Office, outlining a "plan for success in Iraq" that would allow for about 5,700 American troops to return home by Christmas and as many as 30,000 by next July. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home. And in all we do, I will ensure that our commanders on the ground have the troops and flexibility they need to defeat the enemy," he said.
The address followed testimony that Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of multinational forces in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker gave to Congress earlier in the week. Bush's strategy would reduce the number of American troops fighting in Iraq to about 130,000 by next July — a level about equal to the pre-surge number. He said it offers a bridge to those who desire American troops to come home and those who believe U.S. security depends on a stable Iraq.
"The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together," Bush said.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, said Bush's announced reduction in troops is a "deceptive effort to assuage public opinion."
"This is more of the same, and sadly, more loss of American lives and rising costs, with no evidence of political change in Iraq," she said. "Redeploying troops over the course of nearly a year to pre-surge levels represents nothing new and is clearly far from the change of direction our country needs."
DeLauro said Bush is being forced to reduce troop levels next year because there are no replacements available without reducing time between active duty deployments.
"The public will see through this new effort to mislead the country, and I am confident it will lead to increased support in Congress for a change in course," she said.
Dodd said he plans to introduce an amendment to this year's defense budget blueprint that would set an enforceable deadline for completing the redeployment of troops from Iraq by April 30.
"None of our choices are easy, but they are clear," Dodd said. "We must choose the policy that is best for our nation, even in the face of extreme difficulty. Every additional day we 'stay the course' in Iraq, our nation is less safe and the people of Iraq get further away from coming together to fashion a political and diplomatic solution to their civil conflict."
Shays believes the Iraq military should be able to handle internal security of their country within 12 to 18 months, although American forces would likely be needed along the borders to discourage Iran, Syria or Turkey from going into Iraq.
Shays also dismissed criticism that the Iraqi government is dysfunctional, suggesting as Bush did that progress is being made from the bottom up on several key benchmarks — including reconciliation and oil revenue sharing.
Shays said he would still support legislation to require President Bush to set a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, but opposes calls for a quick redeployment of troops, fearing that it would leave Iraq in the hands of Iran.
"I find it particularly irresponsible for us to leave precipitously," he said. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2, said that drawing down troops to pre-surge levels is not progress. "Americans understand what the president does not — that this conflict will only come to a conclusion through a change in policy, a diplomatic surge in the region and a real draw down of American troops. Instead, the president proposes more of the same and a war without end," he said.
Courtney said the General Accountability Office's independent analysis of progress in Iraq found that its government had failed to meet 15 of 18 benchmarks for success. "After four long years in Iraq, our troops should not be used to prop up a failed policy that is not moving Iraq toward stability," he said.
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman was not available for comment Thursday because he was observing the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day holiday that began at sundown on Wednesday.
In January 2007, President Bush announced what he termed a short-term increase in troop levels in Iraq to provide the Iraqi government and people time and security to achieve political reconciliation and the end of sectarian violence.
I opposed this so-called "surge" then because I was deeply concerned about the impact of this policy on all of our volunteer troops who, four years into this conflict, were not receiving adequate rest time, resources and training. Just as important, I did not have confidence in the Bush administration's commitment to the diplomatic effort to push Iraqi leadership to set aside sectarian loyalties and move forward in the interest of their nation.
Unfortunately, recent testimony by our top military and civilian officials in Iraq earlier this week, and independent reports last week, indicate that while some uneven gains have been made on the security front by U.S. forces, there is a disheartening lack of progress on the political front in Iraq and in the region toward the goal of stability.
Last week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office delivered an independent report to the House Armed Services Committee on which I serve. The GAO found that the Iraqi government failed to meet 15 of the 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for progress in political, security and economic areas.
Most alarming was the finding that only one of eight critical political benchmarks had been met, including the failure to make progress on the critical distribution of oil revenues.
This paints a frustrating picture for the American people. Despite the addition of 35,000 members of the world's finest fighting force and the allocation of hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars, American diplomats and Iraqi national politicians have failed to achieve anything more than token gestures toward political stability.
Indeed, the GAO reported that the national government of Iraq has lost critical Sunni support and is still helpless to confront violent Shia militias that control large neighborhoods in Baghdad. These militias, in defiance of the central government, continue to control the delivery of essential services such as electricity, water and community policing.
At our hearing we were presented with the following prognosis: On the one hand Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of multi-national forces in Iraq, recommends keeping U.S. troops at the current surge level for at least another eight months, until July 2008. Yet, at the same time, Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified that it was unrealistic to expect any progress in the next six months on the political benchmarks that the Iraqis themselves defined as necessary for reconciliation.
This begs simple, yet critical, questions: Why? Why should young American men and women be asked to continue to serve and sacrifice on behalf of a foreign government unwilling to make progress in bringing its nation together?
Why isn't the administration concentrating a "surge" of diplomatic effort to match the military sacrifice to get Iraq closer to the end game of political stability? These are the central questions before Congress and the American people today.
Our troops have performed extraordinarily under difficult circumstances, and have done everything we have asked of them - and more.
I was proud to see their will and determination first hand during a Memorial Day trip to Baghdad this May. However, that trip and the recent testimony before Congress make it clear to me that the future of our involvement in Iraq is not contingent simply on the success of our troops, but rather the willingness of the Iraqi people and government to seek the goals of peace and security together.
The flurry of testimony and reports from the battlefield leaves no doubt that we must change our course in Iraq. We need a U.S. diplomatic surge in the region - inexcusably overdue from the Bush administration. And we need to initiate a significant drawdown of our military involvement in Iraq for the sake of our overextended troops, and to signal that the patience of the American people is not infinite and the time for serious political action by Iraq's leaders is now.
In the final analysis, the Bush plan over the next 11 months is to slowly draw down our troop levels to the same number we had in January 2007, with absolutely no end in sight after that. Our troops and the American people deserve better. Our men and women in uniform, our military readiness and our national security require a real policy change in Iraq.
"Mr. Speaker, today we are here, exactly 100 days after a historic watershed election in this country, in which the American people spoke loudly and clearly that they wanted a new Congress to rise to its constitutional duty and hold this administration accountable for its war policy in Iraq. The day I was sworn in as a new Member of Congress, I accepted this responsibility, and I rise today in opposition to the President's escalation of the war and in support of H. Con. Res. 63."
"Make no mistake about the significance of what is happening this week. America's new Congress will go on record for the first time in opposition to the Bush administration's 4-year legacy of mistakes and misjudgments in Iraq. This will be in sharp contrast to 8 months ago when the prior Congress did exactly the opposite. That Congress lined up in lockstep with a war resolution written by and for the White House."
"That resolution completely brushed over the misleading and manipulated intelligence that got us into this conflict, the strain of this war on our brave men and women in uniform, and the drain on our Nation's military readiness that is undercutting critical efforts in Afghanistan and our overall defense infrastructure. Instead of doing their constitutional duty, the 109th Congress instead just rubber-stamped the administration's rhetoric and failing policy."
"Opponents of today's resolution are claiming that it will damage our troop's morale. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I believe the opposite is true."
"Let us be very clear about where the 20,000 new troops will come from. President Bush cannot simply dial 911 and 20,000 fresh new troops appear. This escalation can only happen by extending the deployments of soldiers already in Iraq, beyond their promised commitments, or accelerating the arrival of preexisting rotations. Upon close examination, it is clear that the impact of this surge lands squarely on the backs of our men and women in uniform who have already borne an unfair burden."
"As we debate this resolution, there are nearly 1,900 men and women from my State of Connecticut, including 962 from Connecticut's National Guard, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all honored our Nation with their service and sacrifice, and they have done all that has been asked of them and more, and their families have shown awe-inspiring strength in their absence."
"Earlier this month, I was forwarded an e-mail from a constituent serving in Iraq which demonstrates the consequences of these unsustainable policies. In it he described how the morale in his unit fell when they found out that their tour was being unexpectedly extended another 4 months. He wrote:"
"These guys have seen so much of the fighting here. To see the looks on these soldiers' faces was heartbreaking. A lot of these guys had plans made already with their loved ones, like weddings, trips, or family that traveled from far away to see them get off that plane. There are children that were all excited, holding signs they made, waiting to see their fathers again only to have that shattered. How much more can soldiers like this take? These guys deserve the right to go home. They earned it."
"Letters like these demonstrate the real impact on our troops from the President's policy. And they are reinforced by the testimony I have heard at Armed Services. Over and over again, we have heard about the deterioration of our military readiness caused by over deployment of our troops. Consider that today, as a result of the strain of the war, we currently have no active duty or Reserve brigades considered combat-ready in the Continental U.S., leaving our Nation dangerously unprepared and vulnerable if needed to respond to other global threats or domestic emergencies."
"Despite the huge costs to our troops and our national defense, the President has opted to aggravate the holes in our defense with a plan to escalate the number of troops in Iraq. And for what?"
"Yesterday, I read the new classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. What I found in this report was the same as the unclassified version that has been reported in the press; that we have a deteriorating security situation in Iraq whose fundamental causes were identified as political, not military. This finding completely dovetails with the findings of the Iraq Study Group who came to the exact same conclusion."
"Instead of absorbing the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report and the National Intelligence Estimate and surging diplomacy and political solutions, the President instead has opted to escalate the war by sending 21,500 more troops into the middle of a violent sectarian conflict."
"Where are the plans to equitably divide oil revenue or revisit the Iraqi Constitution which was left incomplete 2 years ago, or the push to create a real power-sharing arrangement between the Shia and the Sunni? Nowhere do we see any effort to get to the root causes of the violence. Instead, the Bush plan is more of the same, asking our brave troops to do the impossible, settling a sectarian conflict that goes back centuries in time."
"President Bush has made his choice. Now it is Congress' turn as a coequal branch of government to make ours."
"I firmly believe that the passage of this resolution will go down in history as the first stirrings of life from a Congress that has been in an Iraq stranglehold for 4 long years. It is an honor to be part of this history on behalf of one of the districts that had the courage to vote for change last November 100 days ago, and I will support resolution 63."
