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Politics

Bush says no retreat on Iraq

By WASHINGTON POST
Published January 15, 2007

WASHINGTON - Faced with substantial opposition both in Congress and among the American public to their Iraq plans, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney vowed Sunday to forge ahead with the deployment of more than 21,000 additional troops.

In an interview broadcast Sunday night on CBS's 60 Minutes, Bush said he has the authority as commander in chief to move ahead with the deployment, regardless of what the Democratic-controlled Congress does in opposition.

"In this situation I do, yeah," Bush said. "I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward."

National security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday that the money is already in place to begin moving additional troops to Iraq. "We have money in the '07 budget, which has been appropriated by the Congress, to move these troops to Iraq, and the president will be doing that," he said on ABC's This Week.

The addition of 21,500 troops in Iraq, announced by Bush on Wednesday in a nationally televised speech, is part of an administration strategy aimed at quelling the sectarian violence in Iraq and at salvaging an unpopular war effort that Bush himself has said is not succeeding.

Bush said on 60 Minutes that the only option besides boosting troop levels would be to withdraw, a move supported by some Democrats but one he called tantamount to defeat.

"I began to think, well, if failure is not an option and we've got to succeed, how best to do so? And that's how I came up with the plan I did," Bush said.

That plan has run into fierce opposition among Democrats and a growing number of Republicans, while a clear majority of the public now advocate a withdrawal of U.S. troops from the conflict. Some congressional critics are advocating a nonbinding resolution to reflect their conviction that more troops will not provide the answer in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday on CNN's Late Edition that such a resolution, drawing bipartisan support, "would be a strong message to the president, to put pressure on the Iraqis to reach a political solution."

Appearing on This Week, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said he would not limit funds for the troops already in Iraq, but would try to put language in the bill carrying supplemental funds for the war that could prevent the final two U.S. brigades going over in April and May.

His vehicle would be the roughly $100-billion in supplemental funds for the war that the White House has said it would send Congress in February. Murtha said he would use hearings on that legislation to show there are no reserve U.S. troops available in case of conflicts with Iran or North Korea.

Bush, Cheney and Republican legislators voiced their opposition to any legislation.

Cheney said on Fox News Sunday that a resolution such as Levin's would not influence how the administration executes its policy.

No 'war by committee'

"Congress, obviously, has to support the effort through the power of the purse, so they have got a role to play and we certainly recognize that," Cheney said. "But also, you cannot run a war by committee."

Cheney also took a swipe at critics of Bush's plan for not offering a different strategy to win a war that he calls pivotal to U.S. interests.

"I have yet to hear a coherent policy out of the Democratic side, with respect to an alternative to what the president's proposed in terms of going forward," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked about the Levin plan, said: "A motion of disapproval, I view as purely a political ploy to do further damage to the president."

Democrats say they want to start a phased withdrawal of troops, along with stepped-up diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors, to speed up the transfer of responsibility to Iraqis.

Bush, Cheney and Hadley emphasized that the rise in troop numbers would be coupled with new efforts to get Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take tough action necessary to improve security in the country.

"I told him it's time to get going," Bush said of Maliki, who has blocked U.S. troops from engaging fighters loyal to militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Bush also said he was discouraged by the handling of Saddam Hussein's execution. He said he saw a tape of part of the execution, although he didn't watch the part showing the former dictator actually being hanged. "They could have handled it a lot better," he said.

Fast Facts:

The latest

- Syria's leader promised to help ease tensions in Iraq during Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's landmark visit to Damascus on Sunday, just days after President Bush accused Syria of backing the Iraqi insurgency.

- The U.S. military said that two soldiers died Sunday in explosions in Baghdad, and that a soldier died Saturday in an explosion in northern Iraq.

- At least six boys in five countries hanged themselves after watching televised images of Saddam Hussein's Dec. 30 execution, officials say. The deaths occurred in the United States, Turkey, Pakistan, Yemen (where there were two) and Saudi Arabia. The children were 9 to 13 years old.

- At least 78 people were reported killed or found dead on Sunday in Iraq.

[Last modified January 15, 2007, 01:13:56]