Congressional Republicans' Iraq Dissent Grows
By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer
June 7, 2007
WASHINGTON -- In another sign that Republicans on Capitol Hill are impatient
with the White House's Iraq strategy, two more GOP senators Thursday got behind
legislation designed to encourage the Bush administration to reduce U.S.
military involvement.
Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith are co-sponsoring a
nonbinding resolution by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., that urges support
for creating semi-autonomous regions for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in Iraq, a
plan Biden has been championing for more than a year.
That comes a day after five GOP senators signed on to separate legislation that
would enact the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which envisioned that
U.S. troops could start coming home next March.
That legislation -- championed by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Ken
Salazar, D-Col. -- has the backing of several GOP loyalists, including Sens.
Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Robert Bennett of Utah.
Neither bill sets a firm deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, a key
demand of anti-war Democrats who have fought for months to force GOP lawmakers
and the White House to accept such a pullout.
Democratic congressional leaders were forced to temporarily abandon that
approach last month after the president, backed by Republicans, vetoed an
emergency war spending bill that contained a withdrawal timeline.
Bush has said more time is needed for his plan to use additional U.S. troops to
reduce violence and pave the way for a political settlement of the sectarian
differences blamed for much of the violence in Iraq. The administration has
promised a progress report by September.
But Republican support on Capitol Hill for alternative strategies may indicate
that the White House will have to shift its own Iraq plans more quickly.
The Bush administration in the past has spurned both the Iraq Study Group and
the Biden proposals, though recently the president has spoken more favorably
about the group's recommendations.
Biden's plan, which he outlined in May 2006 with Leslie H. Gelb, president
emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, envisions a reduction of U.S.
forces early next year as Iraq is decentralized and substantial authority is
devolved to the country's ethnic regions.
On Thursday, Biden said the president still "clings to a fatally flawed notion .
. . that the Iraqis will rally behind a strong central government that keeps the
country together and protects the rights of all factions."
"Simply put," Biden continued, "Iraq cannot be run from the center absent a
dictator or foreign occupation. If we want the country to hold together and find
stability, we have to make federalism work."
Brownback agreed Thursday, calling the so-called federalism plan "the only
political solution that works."
Biden acknowledges that his plan could require a long-term, though much reduced,
U.S. military presence in Iraq, much as American troops have helped keep peace
among once-warring ethnic communities in the Balkans.
That did not trouble Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., one of the staunchest
advocates for withdrawing American troops and a co-sponsor of the Biden
resolution.
"Even those of us who have been . . . calling for very swift removal of forces .
. . have always said it's not so much that we object to our being there as what
the mission is," she said.
