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WASHINGTON: Democrats accused President George W.
Bush of “recklessly” leading America into war in Iraq and called
for a withdrawal of US forces in a blunt rebuttal to the
president’s annual State of the Union speech.
“This country has patiently
endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years,” said Sen. James
Webb, who was designated to deliver the opposition party’s
rebuttal to the president’s key annual address before Congress.
Bush urged a deeply skeptical US
public and wary lawmakers to give his strategy to send 21,500 more
US soldiers into battle in Iraq a chance to work, saying he and his
commanders had looked “at every possible approach.”
But as the president spoke, the
first Democratic majority in Congress in 12 years geared to oppose
the military operation that has claimed more than 3,000 US lives
since the March 2003 invasion.
Congress was poised to take up
several bills amounting to resolutions of a no-confidence vote in
the president’s handling of Iraq, with the first Senate hearings
today.
One of the bills deemed to have
the best chances of being adopted is proposed by leading Republican
lawmaker John Warner, former head of the Senate Committee on Armed
Services, in what could deal a sharp setback to the president.
The opposition has insisted that
Bush will not get “a blank check” as they consider a raft of
proposals, ranging from a nonbinding congressional resolution
rejecting his troop increase, to bills capping US forces at the
existing level or even cutting war funds altogether.
“The president took us into
this war recklessly,” Webb declared, saying Bush ignored the
counsel even many of his top advisers in pushing ahead with the
invasion.
“The majority of the nation no
longer supports the way this war is being fought—nor does the
majority of our military,” he said. “We need a new direction.”
Another leading Bush critic,
Democrat Sen. Barack Obama, who is seeking to run in the 2008
presidential elections to replace Bush, echoed that view, telling
CNN that the president did little to persuade critics that he was on
the right track.
If the president’s remarks did
little to sway Democrats, political pundit Larry Sabato said they
were also unlikely to convince a cynical public whose patience has
been spent by continual setbacks in Iraq.
It was not just Democrats who
were unconvinced, however, particularly on the question of the way
forward in Iraq.
“The Pentagon has warned that
an escalation of our troop levels in Iraq would lead to an increase
in al-Qaeda attacks, provide more targets for Sunni insurgents and
fuel the jihadist appeals for foreign fighters to attack US
soldiers,” said Republican Rep. Walter Jones.
“I am persuaded by all
available evidence that an escalation of US troop levels is not the
way forward in Iraq,” said Jones, a one-time staunch Bush
supporter, who in recent months has become an outspoken critic.
--AFP
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