CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
April 7, 2008 – 1:53 p.m.
McCain, GOP Leaders Defend Iraq War Progress
By Josh Rogin and Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff
Led by their presumptive presidential nominee, Senate Republicans were lining up Monday to defend President Bush’s strategy in Iraq as Congress prepares to hear the latest progress report from top U.S. military and diplomatic officials.
Republicans plan to characterize Democrats as failing to recognize a broad trend towards stability and political reconciliation in Iraq and accuse them of politicizing Tuesday’s testimony by General David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.
Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., laid down the marker for his party in a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. He touted the achievements of Bush’s “surge” strategy, which he credited for a dramatic reduction of civilian deaths in Iraq in 2007, and he framed Democratic calls for a faster withdrawal of U.S. troops as perilous and shortsighted.
Democratic presidential rivals Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-N.Y., and Barack Obama , D-Ill., want to begin significant reductions of U.S. combat troops in early 2009.
“What they are really proposing . . . is a policy of withdraw and re-invade. For if we withdraw hastily and irresponsibly, we will guarantee the trouble will come immediately,” McCain said, “I can hardly imagine a more imprudent and dangerous course.”
Star-Studded Hearings
All three presidential candidates will be on hand to grill Petraeus and Crocker during Tuesday’s hearings. McCain and Clinton serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the officials will testify in the morning. Obama serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, which will hear from the pair in the afternoon.
In his speech, McCain also countered Democratic calls for Iraq to foot more of the bill the bill for its own reconstruction.
Democrats led by Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin , D-Mich., and Ben Nelson , D-Neb., are developing legislation that would transform U.S. reconstruction funds for Iraq from grants into loans.
The costs of the war and its impact on the struggling U.S. economy will be a constant refrain for Democrats at the hearings. But McCain, in his speech, said a cutback in reconstruction aid to Iraq would send the wrong message.
“We must increase levels of reconstruction assistance, so that Iraq’s political and economic development can proceed in the security that our forces and Iraqi Security Forces provide,” he said.
Republicans also will use the hearings to attack the Democratic leadership’s plan to use an upcoming war supplemental spending bill to fund a range of unrelated domestic needs.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl , R-Ariz, said Republicans would oppose add-ons to the supplemental bill, which Democratic leaders are crafting now in anticipation of a late April or early May debate.
McCain, GOP Leaders Defend Iraq War Progress
“I really resent it,” Kyl said, “It’s a blackmail, using our troops and their requirements as a hostage to the Democrat desire to spend more money on their projects.”
According to a senior Democratic aide, the administration has an outstanding request for $108.1 billion for fiscal 2008, after $86.8 in war-related money was appropriated late last year.
While defense appropriators have recommended shifting $8 billion to $9 billion away from Iraq towards domestic military needs, Democrats have started urging appropriators to add funds for unrelated priorities such as infrastructure spending, extended unemployment insurance, national park recovery and science investments.
Benchmarks Met?
Tuesday’s hearings will focus on Iraqi progress toward benchmarks set out by the administration at the start of last year.
That progress is sharply disputed within Congress. House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton , D-Mo., said last week that Iraq had completely met only three benchmarks.
Kyl said Republicans believe the Iraqi government has achieved 12 out of 18 benchmarks to track their progress towards reconciliation. He based that on an assessment by Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
A March report by the Brookings Institution said Iraq had achieved five out of 11 benchmarks on political progress that Brookings had independently codified.
Kyl also set out to establish expectations for the upcoming testimony. “It will be a mixed report, but a report that speaks highly of the progress that American military forces have made,” he said.
Meanwhile, a report released Monday by the government funded think tank U.S. Institute of Peace, warned that the “political progress is so slow, halting and superficial, and social and political fragmentation so pronounced, that the [United States] is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago.
“Lasting political development could take five to 10 years of full, unconditional U.S. commitment to Iraq,” the report stated.
The Big Picture?
Democrats said they would attempt to move the focus of the hearings away from ambiguous notions of short-term progress toward the big picture on Iraq and the war on terror.
McCain, GOP Leaders Defend Iraq War Progress
“What is the plan for Iraq?” is the most basic question Congress should ask, said Rand Beers, president of the National Security Network. “What is the strategy? How are we going to get to an endpoint?”
Democrats will warn against acceptance of rosy scenarios.
“We can’t forget as we listen to the administrations’ comments about the war, the numbers of times we’ve heard similar comments previously, and the numbers of times they have been wrong,” said John Kerry , D-Mass.
Kerry suggested this week’s hearings are really about setting the stage for change next year.
“That’s what this presidential race is about,” he said. “It is clear that we do not have the votes in the United States Congress at this moment in time. That’s part of what the Senate races will be about.”
Sen. Jack Reed , D-R.I., said he will ask Petraeus and Crocker why Iraq isn’t spending a reported $30 billion it has in U.S. banks and $42 billion it receives in oil revenue on its own reconstruction.
“To think that we’re still sending money there while they’re sitting on their resources is to me very difficult to comprehend,” Reed said.
Iran’s expanded influence within Iraq, both with government officials and insurgent groups, is another issue Democrats will explore.
Reed said, “The Iranians appear to be involved in every major Shia community.”
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