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	US senators challenge Bush''s Iraq optimism by Reuters / Los Angeles Times USA   June 20, 2005   Republican senators challenge Bush''s Iraq optimism. (Reuters)   US President George W Bush needs to tell Americans the nation faces "a long, hard slog" in Iraq, a key Republican senator says, while another says the White House was "disconnected from reality" in its optimism over the war.   "Too often we''ve been told and the American people have been told that we''re at a turning point," Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on NBC''s Meet the Press. "What the American people should have been told and should be told ... (is that) it''s long, it''s hard, it''s tough.. It''s going to be at least a couple more years," said Senator McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.   Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, was quoted by US News and World Report as saying the administration''s Iraq policy was failing. "Things aren''t getting better, they''re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," said Senator Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "It''s like they''re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we''re losing in Iraq."   The two senators'' remarks came as the Bush administration makes a push to counter growing US public impatience with the Iraq war, and to resist demands by some law-makers to set a date for withdrawal of US forces. US public polls show the Iraq war is losing support.   Washington. June 17, 2005   "War Criticism and concerns both Growing", by John Hendren and Cynthia H. Cho. (LA Times)   Apprehension over the war in Iraq surged Thursday as a group of lawmakers demanded that President Bush develop plans to withdraw troops and a top Pentagon official expressed concern about sagging public support for the U.S. military effort.   After a deadly increase in violence in Iraq, congressional critics of the war grew more vocal in demanding a change in policy, and antiwar activists staged a rally near the White House..   A Gallup poll this week found that about 6 in 10 Americans advocated a partial or full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. This month, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that 41% of Americans approved of how Bush was handling Iraq, the president''s worst grade to date.   Insurgent attacks have claimed the lives of hundreds of Iraqi civilians in recent weeks. Eighty-eight U.S. troops died in May and 45 were killed in the first half of June, the highest level since 126 troops were slain in January, before the Iraqi election. As of Thursday, at least 1,713 U.S. troops had been killed since the start of the war.   A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution that would require Bush to submit a plan for troop withdrawal by the end of the year and to begin the pullout by October 2006.   "After 2 1/2 years, it''s right to take a fresh look. We have a right to ask, ''What are the goals?'' " said Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, one of the Republican sponsors of the measure.   "It''s time to get serious about an exit strategy," said Rep. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, a Democratic sponsor.   Other sponsors of the resolution include Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) and Lynn C. Woolsey (D-Petaluma).   The White House rejected requests by lawmakers and antiwar groups that Bush respond to the "Downing Street memo" and other prewar British government documents that foreshadowed U.S. military action against Iraq.   The Downing Street memo reported minutes of a meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his advisors indicating that the U.S. considered an attack on Iraq to be inevitable eight months before the war began.   More than 30 members of Congress attended a meeting Thursday called by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, to discuss the British documents. The meeting was not an official hearing of Conyers'' committee and was held in a room in the basement of the Capitol.   John C. Bonifaz, one of four witnesses invited to meet with lawmakers and the cofounder of an organization called AfterDowningStreet.com, said that if the documents were proven to be true, the president may have violated a federal law against misleading Congress, and his actions would be grounds for impeachment. "The American people deserve to know if the president lied," Bonifaz said.   Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in action April 4, 2004, told lawmakers the Downing Street memo confirmed what she had already suspected: "The leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."   Sheehan is the cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization whose members have lost a relative in combat and who oppose the war.   Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who traveled to Niger to investigate the alleged sale of processed uranium ore from the country to Iraq, and Ray McGovern, a former CIA official, also met with Conyers and other lawmakers.   Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) was one of more than 30 lawmakers who announced the formation of an "Out of Iraq" congressional caucus.   After the hearing, Conyers and other lawmakers went to Lafayette Park across from the White House for a rally organized by AfterDowningStreet.com. Kevin Zeese, director of Democracy Rising, urged protesters to "give a shout out if you think we were misled." He was greeted by cheers from the hundreds of demonstrators.   Some members of the crowd broke into chants of "Bring them home now!" and "End this war!" and carried banners calling for Bush''s impeachment. The rally brought out young and old, Washington residents and people who had traveled from across the country.   "Bush should be impeached for lying to Congress and then prosecuted for war crimes," said Carol Moore, a 57-year-old writer and resident of Washington. "Impeached and prosecuted."   A small group of counter-protesters demanded support for U.S. troops.   Conyers and others sought to enter the White House gates to deliver petitions gathered by an anti-Bush group, MoveOn.Org, and others demanding that the president respond to the British documents.   Analysts said the antiwar rhetoric on display Thursday marked a reversal from recent months. The Iraqi election Jan. 30 boosted hopes for progress, experts said, but the situation has since deteriorated.   "Now you''ve got a combination of a lot of death, a lot of violence, things getting worse and no real convincing argument from the president as to why," said Michael O''Hanlon, a military analyst for the Brookings Institution, a Washington political think tank. "It was almost unnatural that there was such a long hiatus in antiwar activity."   The antiwar movement has reappeared in part because lawmakers — especially Democrats — have avoided rhetoric that could be perceived as critical of troops but keep hearing differently from constituents, activists said.   "We see this as the beginning of the end," said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic representative from Maine who is executive director of the antiwar group Win Without War. "It''s the very beginning of a new wave of activism on this war. There''s a real sense that something is beginning to move."
	Washington now faces a no-win situation in Iraq by Patrick Seale The Daily Star Lebanon   Beirut, 28 June, 2005   America is facing the real possibility of defeat in Iraq. The insurgency is as robust and as lethal as ever. U.S. troops are overstretched and thin on the ground, while Iraqi troops are far from ready to replace them. Sectarian violence is on the rise, suggesting that civil war is just round the corner. Every day brings its terrible tale of carnage. There seems to be no safety anywhere - and certainly not in Baghdad. Iraq under American occupation is slipping into uncontrollable chaos.   This is the backdrop to the visit to Washington that took place last Friday of Iraq's new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. For both Jaafari and U.S. President George W. Bush, this is an exceedingly difficult moment.   What should America do? Should it leave Iraq, or should it stay? No choice has been more difficult for an American president since the Vietnam War. For the first time, a leading American politician and potential presidential candidate, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, was brave enough to say: "The White House is completely disconnected from reality The reality is, we're losing in Iraq."   Even more dangerous for the "war party" - the neoconservative cabal that pressed for war against Iraq - is that it is losing the war in the United States. American opinion is tiring of the war. According to the latest Gallop poll, 57 percent of Americans think the war is "not worth it." Members of Congress report that their constituents are getting restless. As casualties mount, the word from the grass roots is "enough is enough!" Army recruitment rates have plunged, as have Bush's approval ratings, now down to 42 percent from 51 percent after the November elections. In the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans are drafting a resolution calling on Bush to present a strategy for getting the U.S. out of Iraq.   In Brussels last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to drum up international support in men and funds for the Iraq war, but America's allies are extremely reluctant to get sucked into the quagmire. They want Iraqi reconstruction contracts and oil concessions, but they do not want to fight the insurgency. On the contrary, they are heading for the exit. The international coalition has disintegrated. Britain is the only country which still has a substantial fighting force in Iraq, alongside 139,000 American troops.   At a speech at Harvard University on June 7, a former CIA director, John M. Deutch, called for American troops to pull out of Iraq "as soon as possible." Echoing proposals made last January by Senator Edward Kennedy, Deutch said the U.S. should begin the military withdrawal and let Iraqis make their own political decisions.   The opposite view was put last week by The Economist - which has a large American readership. "Recent talk of shipping lots of troops home early next year looks wildly unrealistic," it declared. It quoted "top American officers in Iraq" as saying that the U.S. should not contemplate making significant troops withdrawals for at least two years, perhaps longer.   The Economist was a supporter of the war and still has not had second thoughts. It still thinks America should stay the course and advocates sending in more U.S. troops: "Indeed, if America is serious about vanquishing this insurgency," the magazine argued, "it needs more rather than fewer American boots on the ground To prevail in Iraq, America needs urgently to raise new forces that can be committed to a low-intensity counter-insurgency that might drag on for years."   Those who argue that America should fight on in Iraq point to the danger of "handing victory to the terrorists." An American withdrawal would, they allege, encourage extremists to redouble their campaign, not only against America and its interests in various parts of the world, but also against its regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.   This is precisely the argument used by those who oppose Israel's disengagement from Gaza. An Israeli withdrawal, they claim, would hand victory to Hamas and spread the message that terrorism pays. The thought of Hamas members dancing on the roofs of Jewish settlements seems to be the ultimate Israeli nightmare.   The opposite - and more convincing argument - is that Israel's brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is the main cause of anti-Israeli violence, and that Israel's security would best be served by evacuating, rather than settling, occupied Palestinian territory.   In the same way, the longer the U.S. stays in Iraq, the more attacks it will face. As I wrote long before the war, occupation breeds insurrection. A further argument for getting out is that the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq is turning that country into a training ground for nationalist and Islamic militants from many different countries who, sooner or later, will spread violence elsewhere. As a breeding ground for jihad, Iraq seems set to be playing the same role as Afghanistan in the 1980s.   There has, as yet, been no candid debate in the mainstream U.S. media, still less in Congress, on the controversial question of America's war aims. Why did the U.S. make war on Iraq? The official reasons - Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and its links with Al-Qaeda - have now been shown to be lies. What then were the real reasons?   It would seem that men like Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Bush himself - advocates of using military power to shape the world to America's advantage - were persuaded that Iraq presented a tremendous prize. Its oil reserves were equal to those of Saudi Arabia; its reconstruction was estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars to American firms; while its strategic position made it an ideal place from which to project U.S. military power to the oil-rich Gulf and to a vast region beyond. Seizing Iraq and turning it into a client state was a tempting goal.   Prominent neocons in the Pentagon, such as the former deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, his associate Douglas Feith, and their many friends and colleagues in and out of the administration, pressed for the destruction of Iraq and its army in order to make Israel more secure. They had long advocated regime change in Iraq, but the September 11, 2001 attacks gave them the pretext to push the case for war with greater urgency. They peddled the fantasy that, freed from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, a "democratic" Iraq would be a model for the entire Middle East, which could then be reshaped and restructured to make it pro-American..   Iraq has been weakened for at least a generation. But America's war aims remain out of reach. If the U.S. leaves Iraq, its efforts will have been in vain. But if it stays, the cost in men and treasure will inevitably mount, with no guarantee of political, economic or strategic benefits at the end of the day.   © 2005 The Daily Star
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