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Top US senator urges Iraq backup plan
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 01 31 06A key Republican lawmaker warned Tuesday President George W. Bush was not the "sole decider" on Iraq, as a constitutional wrangle deepened over the new US plan to quell raging violence.
Republican Senator Arlen Specter responded to Bush's statement last week that he was the "decision maker" on deployments to Iraq, despite various draft congressional resolutions condemning his plan to send in more troops.
"The president repeatedly makes reference to the fact that he is the decider," Specter said during a Senate hearing on war powers.
"I would suggest ... to the president, that he is not the sole decider. That the decider is a shared and joint responsibility."
Democratic Party presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama meanwhile introduced legislation calling for the pullout of US troops from Iraq to begin no later than May 1, 2007 with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008.
"Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq, but no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody elses civil war," Obama said.
Bush is constitutionally charged as commander-in-chief of US forces and of framing foreign policy, but the Democratic-led Congress which controls US purse strings insists it has a say on Bush's plan to surge 21,500 additional troops into Iraq.
"I'm the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster," Bush said on Friday when questioned about his war plan.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold said in a hearing examining Congress's war powers that he would introduce legislation that would prohibit the use of funds to continue the deployment of US forces in Iraq six months after enactment."By prohibiting funds after a specific deadline, Congress can force the president to bring our forces out of Iraq and out of harms way," Feingold said.
Leaders of the Democratic majority have however said they would not withhold funds so as to avoid endangering US troops locked in battle in Iraq.
A series of non-binding resolutions condemning the troop buildup are expected to come up for debate in the Senate in coming days.
The Senate Foreign Relations committee agreed a draft resolution last week that declared the troop surge plan was contrary to US national interests. But Republican Senator John Warner has a somewhat softer, competing draft which disapproves of Bush's war plan.
Vice President Dick Cheney said last week on CNN that non-binding resolutions would not halt the US operation in Iraq, and would be bad for military morale.
"It won't stop us, and it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops," he said.
Another veteran US Senator Richard Lugar meanwhile raised new questions about the strength of Republican support in Congress for the Bush plan.
Lugar's carefully worded opinion piece in the Washington Post expressed skepticism over the odds for success of the strategy and argued that Iran's growing assertiveness among moderate Arab states offered the United States a chance to solidify its broader objectives in the region.
"Even as the president's Baghdad strategy goes forward, we need to plan for a potent redeployment of US forces in the region to defend oil assets, target terrorist enclaves, deter adventurism by Iran and provide a buffer against regional sectarian conflict."
"In the best case, we could supplement bases in the Middle East with troops stationed outside urban areas in Iraq.
"Such a redeployment would allow us to continue training Iraqi troops and deliver economic assistance, but it would not require us to interpose ourselves between Iraqi sectarian factions."
The Indiana senator warned Sunday that Senate resolutions opposing Bush's war plan would suggest Americans are in "disarray" over Iraq, but aides said the article did not signal a change of position.
AFP 30 2354 GMT 01 07
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