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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Congressman demands Iraq timetable

Bronwyn Lance Chester The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot

Say what you will, Congressman Walter B. Jones is no squish.

Jones, after all, is Mr. Freedom Fries, the man who persuaded Capitol Hill cafeterias to change the potato moniker over France’s opposition to the Iraq war.

That was then, however. This is now.

The soft-spoken North Carolina Republican, whose rambling district stretches from the northern Outer Banks to the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, is introducing legislation this week to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Get one thing straight: Jones is no moderate. He’s perceived on the Hill not as a loose cannon, but as a solid, common-sense conservative concerned with military pay, states’ rights and balanced budgets.

In recent years, Jones has sponsored legislation to boost enlisted pay and improve the military’s Tricare health-care system. He recently cast a vote against stem-cell research.

But he’s also demonstrated flashes of independence. Jones was a gutsy Republican co-sponsor of the Democratic bill to restore House ethics rules changed to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay. And he’s taken the Bush administration to task for misleading Congress on the need for war.

In announcing his intentions Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Jones said:

“When I look at the number of men and women who have been killed – it’s almost 1,700 now, in addition to close to 12,000 have been severely wounded – and I just feel that the reason for going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that’s all been proven that it was never there.”

According to his spokeswoman, Kristen Quigley, Jones’ bill, scheduled to be introduced Thursday morning, will contain two timetables. The first would establish a date by which President Bush must formulate specific goals for exiting from Iraq. The second would be for the plan’s implementation.

Predictably, critics have already started to pounce. A message board under Jones’ bio on Congress.org is filled with outraged missives such as, “A timetable for our withdrawal would be placed on the calendar of every terrorist on the planet!”

But Quigley says that’s a misconception. “It’s a long time-line. The completion would be left up to, within reason, Bush’s discretion.” And the schedule can slip, according to events.

It’s no coincidence that Jones, who represents one of America’s most military districts, is putting his foot down.

After two years, soldiers and civilians alike still have no idea what success in Iraq looks like. Is it a written constitution? Full democracy for the entire country? Military self-sufficiency? Total defeat of the insurgency?

Jones is clearly trying to force the administration to define what our Iraq endgame is. And for that, he deserves praise, not opprobrium. But his plan is indicative of two larger issues.

The first is a loss of public faith in the war. Last week, a Gallup Poll revealed that nearly six in 10 Americans believe we should withdraw some or all of our troops from Iraq. A similar ABC-Washington Post poll found that two-thirds of respondents believed the U.S. military is now bogged down there.

And consider: President Bush’s popularity is at an all-time low. Conservative Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, a former Bush Cabinet member, has broken with the White House on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. And a Monday New York Times story revealed just how unready-for-primetime many Iraqi troops are.

These factors could spill over to the second issue: House members and one-third of the Senate are up for re-election next year.

With America’s growing queasiness about the war, many GOP lawmakers are having night sweats envisioning a redux of 1994, when public discontent swept incumbent Democrats from power.

Many Americans are looking at Iraq and wondering when we’ll be done. That’s exactly what Walter Jones is trying to find out.