Hadley decries Democratic pullout plan

WASHINGTON – National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley said Sunday that pushes by congressional Democrats to put time limits on the Iraq war could doom U.S. military efforts and leave the strife-torn country a hub of international terrorism.

“They want to get a safe haven in Iraq from which they can then destabilize neighboring regimes and come and plan actions against the United States,” Hadley said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Hadley’s remarks came as the war is about to enter its fifth year, prompting lawmakers, military experts and pundits to assess its progress and its cost.

More than 3,200 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the American-led invasion, as well as an estimated 60,000 Iraqis. By year’s end, the war’s monetary price will reach $500 billion.

Hadley, who appeared on two Sunday TV news interview shows, insisted that the result would justify the bloodshed and sacrifice.

“The cost has been enormous for the Iraqis. The interesting thing is that the Iraqis are nonetheless willing to pay it,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Others strongly disagreed. “If you’re asking me about it, no, I don’t think it was worth it at all,” George Joulwan, a retired Army general who served as supreme allied commander of NATO, told “Late Edition.” “I think it was not, in fact, an essential part of the war against the jihadis across the world and has been a diversion from that and has put us in a real mess.”

This week, the House will vote on a $124 billion spending bill that would compel the withdrawal of most American forces from Iraq by summer 2008. Democrats on Sunday challenged Hadley’s assertion that continuing the U.S. operation in Iraq was the way to win a war on terrorism.

“The central front of terror is not Baghdad,” Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a retired three-star admiral, said on “Meet the Press.”

Resources devoted to Iraq would be better spent in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, Sestak said.

Hadley labeled legislators’ blueprints for withdrawal a “charade.” Aside from the threatened veto, he said, the House plan is unlikely to win approval in the Senate, which rejected a resolution last week that would have required Bush to start withdrawing combat troops from Iraq 120 days after its enactment.