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Senators denounce Bush's performance as war president
(William C. McMann, Associated Press, October 12, 2003)
President Bush has lost control of Iraq policy because of infighting among administration officials, the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday. . . . The administration also came under criticism from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for being unwilling to create a real international coalition and alienating governments everywhere. "This is haphazard, shotgun, shoot-from-the-hip diplomacy," the Massachusetts senator said. . . . Added the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware: "There's no clear articulation within this administration of what the goals, what the message is, what the plan is. You have this significant division within the administration between the Powells and the Rumsfelds." . . . Since early in the administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell has counseled a generally more moderate line than Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Even before the Iraq war in the spring, tales of tension and turf battles between their departments were widespread. . . . Lugar also predicted American forces might have to be in Iraq in some capacity for eight years or more. Both he and Biden said the country's recovery would cost at least $50 billion more than the $87 billion, including more than $20 billion for the recovery, that Bush has requested and is pending in Congress. . . . Kerry, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said Bush and Cheney should apologize to Americans "for having misled America, for not having kept his promises of working adequately within the international community, not having built a legitimate international coalition, not having exhausted the process of the inspections. . . . "And, most importantly, not having gone to war as a matter of last resort, which is what he promised to America." . . . The senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, also accused Bush of misleading the country about the war. . . . "We did not go to war to bring democracy and prosperity and peace to Iraq," Rockefeller told "Fox News Sunday." . . . "It was all about weapons of mass destruction and the imminent threat of America getting attacked. And what's ironic is that, in spite of the incredible job that our soldiers and Guard and the Reserve have done, we really are in more peril today than we were at the end of the formal part of the war."

posted by LoZo 4:40 PM