Senators join to oppose buildup
WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a formal resolution of opposition to President Bush’s buildup of troops in Iraq Wednesday, calling for more diplomacy, international cooperation and an “appropriately expedited” transfer of military responsibilities to Iraqi security forces.
The nonbinding resolution, which could come to a vote within two weeks, moves Congress a major step closer to a public confrontation with the Bush administration over war policy. A Senate vote would be followed quickly by action in the House. But even before the resolution’s introduction, prominent lawmakers, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., were pushing for far tougher measures that could cut off funding for the war and legislatively thwart Bush’s “surge” of 21,500 additional troops.
Clinton said Wednesday that she intends to support the resolution, drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. But, she added, “we will eventually have to move to tougher requirements on the administration to get their attention.”
No fewer than four measures were introduced Wednesday to block the war policy, including the Senate resolution and multiple proposals demanding congressional authorization before additional troop deployments. By day’s end, the resolution of opposition had picked up another Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Olympia Snowe, of Maine.
Administration officials summoned at least half a dozen skeptical Republican senators to the White House and dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to the Senate GOP’s weekly policy lunch.
Meanwhile, Bush’s allies in Congress ratcheted up their rhetoric, questioning the wisdom and seriousness of colleagues who are pushing toward a confrontation with the administration. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., dismissed the resolution as a “political ploy.”
The Senate resolution minces no words, declaring “it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq.” But it goes well beyond a simple statement of opposition. Drawing heavily from the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, it calls for an acceleration of the training of Iraqi forces and the use of U.S. troops to secure Iraq’s border to prevent meddling by its neighbors.
It calls for an “appropriately expedited timeline” for the transfer of internal security duties to the Iraqi government, and it urges the administration to “engage nations in the Middle East to develop a regional, internationally-sponsored peace and reconciliation process.”
The measure will come before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Tuesday’s State of the Union address and is likely to be reported out for action in the full Senate the following week.
There is no shortage of legislative proposals to follow the resolution. Clinton, an expected contender for the White House, proposed capping troop levels in Iraq at around 135,000, bolstering troop strength in Afghanistan, and delivering both Bush and Iraq an ultimatum: Disarm the sectarian militia, reach agreement on Iraqi oil-revenue sharing, amend the Iraqi constitution to ensure minority rights, and convene a regional peace conference – or lose funding.