WASHINGTON - In a major new blow to
President George W Bush's determination to "stay
the course" in Iraq, an influential Democratic
hawk with close ties to the military has called
for Washington to begin withdrawing US troops
immediately.
In an emotional news
conference Thursday morning, Representative John
Murtha, a former officer in the Marines and the
ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations
Sub-committee of the House of Representatives,
announced he would soon introduce legislation
requiring US ground troops to be "redeploy[ed]"
out of Iraq and to send a "quick-reaction" force into
the
region for possible use against "terrorist" camps
in their place. "The war in Iraq is not going
as advertised," he said. "It is a flawed policy
wrapped in an illusion ... It is evident that
continued military action in Iraq is not in the
best interest of the United States of America, the
Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."
As a long-time Democratic hawk and staunch
supporter of the military, Murtha, who originally
supported the Iraq war, will make it much easier
for fellow Democrats and some Republicans to
challenge the Bush administration's continuing
calls to "stay the course" in Iraq.
Even
before his statement, Republican lawmakers were
voicing growing fears that Iraq threatened their
hold on both houses of Congress in next November's
mid-term Congressional elections. In a major
setback to Bush and an indication of his party's
rising anxiety, a majority of Republicans voted on
Tuesday to require the administration to submit
detailed reports about progress toward withdrawing
US troops over the next year and replacing them
with Iraqi forces.
The New York Times
called the resolution "a vote of no confidence on
the war in Iraq", while its sponsor, Senate Armed
Forces Committee chairman John Warner, described
his amendment as a blunt warning to Iraqis that
Washington had "done [its] part" and was fast
running out of patience.
Democrats, who
until recently had been deeply divided about what
to do in Iraq, have increasingly taken the
political offensive over growing public sentiment
(57%, according to one poll last week) that the
administration manipulated the intelligence in
order to rally the country to war, a charge that
Murtha endorsed on Thursday.
Led by Bush,
the administration has tried to mount a
counter-offensive by calling Democratic charges
that it deliberately misled the country into war
"irresponsible" and deeply damaging to the morale
of the some 150,000 troops currently in Iraq.
But its efforts so far have appeared
largely ineffective in changing public opinion, in
part because last month's indictment in connection
with the "outing" of a covert Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) officer on perjury charges of Vice
President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has added weight to charges
that intelligence was indeed manipulated.
Added to this are the widely publicized
claims by former secretary of state Colin Powell's
chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson, that Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld led a "cabal" that circumvented
normal bureaucratic and intelligence channels in
order to take the country to war.
Nor did
it help that a prominent moderate Republican and
likely 2008 presidential candidate, Senator Chuck
Hagel, criticized the White House's
counter-offensive for "dividing the country". In a
particularly damaging comment in a major policy
address this week, Hagel, a decorated Vietnam
veteran who has voiced alarm over developments in
Iraq over the past two years, noted that Congress
should have spoken out earlier during the Vietnam
War. While the administration has appeared
flummoxed and on the defensive over the charges
that it manipulated intelligence before the war,
Democrats have appeared increasingly unified
behind proposals to begin withdrawing troops from
Iraq after the December 15 elections there
according to a timetable that would see most of
them leave by the end of next year.
In the
past two weeks, both Senator John Kerry and his
2004 vice presidential running-mate, former
senator John Edwards, have publicly admitted that
they now regret their votes in October 2002 to
give Bush the authority to go to war, and offered
support for legislation that would at least
establish benchmarks for withdrawing troops.
In yet another important step in the
Democrats' evolution, former president Bill
Clinton declared for the first time this week that
the decision to go to war in Iraq was "wrong",
thus presumably preparing the ground for other
Democrats, particularly his senator-wife, Hillary,
who has until now opposed withdrawal, to move in a
new direction.
It is in this context that
Murtha's remarks will add to the momentum in favor
of withdrawal. Indeed, Murtha has historically
been so close to the military that many political
observers will conclude that he is speaking for
senior officers who have grown increasingly
convinced that the war has been a major strategic
mistake.
(A survey of military leaders
released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press found they were roughly
evenly split on the wisdom of going to war in the
first place and on whether the Iraq war was
helpful in the larger "war on terrorism".)
Warning that the "future of our military
is at risk", Murtha said he had concluded after
numerous trips to Iraq that "our troops have
become the primary target of the insurgency" and
that "we have become a catalyst for violence".
"I believe we need to turn Iraq over to
the Iraqis," he said. "I believe that before the
Iraqi elections, the Iraqi people and the emerging
government must be put on notice that the United
States will immediately redeploy."
That
redeployment, which partly echoes a more
comprehensive plan put forward by the Center for
American Progress, a think tank consisting mainly
of former senior Clinton administration officials,
in late September, calls for creating a
quick-reaction force to be deployed in the region
for intervention against "terrorist camps".
It also seeks an over-the-horizon Marine
presence that could be deployed quickly,
presumably to prevent incursions by foreign forces
into Iraq in the event of a widening civil
conflict. Murtha also called for intensified
diplomatic and political efforts to help stabilize
Iraq.
"Our military has done everything
that has been asked of them," he said. "The US
cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq
militarily. It is time to bring them home."
