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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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March 17th,
2007 - Iraq War Alters Political Landscape |
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Iraq War Alters Political
Landscape By Anne Flaherty Associated Press March 17, 2007 9:01 PM Washington - Four years into
the Iraq war, about the only thing that has not changed is President Bush's
insistence the fight can be won. With more than 3,200 U.S.
troops dead and still no clear way out, the political landscape could not be
more different. Public support for the war
has fallen to its lowest levels. Republicans have lost control of Congress
because of voters' angst over the conflict. Even the president has
acknowledged the tactical approach to the war must change. The debate on whether to
launch a pre-emptive attack against a nation has given way to this question:
How soon should U.S. troops leave? “The war that we the
Congress authorized the president to engage in is different than the one
we're in today,” acknowledged GOP Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, an ardent
Bush supporter whose seat Democrats are targeting in the 2008 elections. With sectarian attacks on
the rise in Iraq, “I think we have to have a very serious appraisal of how
you conduct yourself in that type of situation,” Young said. Young is not alone in
questioning whether the U.S. is on the right track. Bush's critics and
supporters alike say the four years of violence and the death toll has led to
soul-searching over how far Congress should go to intervene in a war that has
gone badly. White House officials and
many legal experts contend the Constitution gives the president supreme authority
on foreign policy matters and control of the armed forces, whereas Congress'
clearest option is to cut off money. Democrats, reluctant to
restrict that money for fear of being accused of abandoning the troops, are
considering laws that would set a deadline for the war. If these bills pass, Bush is
expected to veto the legislation or ignore it. But how much longer the
president can hold out is uncertain. His Jan. 10 announcement that he planned
to send in 21,500 more combat troops found support among most Republicans.
Yet even they say the clock is ticking. “If this current strategy
doesn't work, the options aren't good,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. If the
violence continues, “you're going to see more and more people suggest we've
got to do something different.” Such skepticism was rare in
2003 when the bombing began. Members of Congress lined up in support of the
U.S.-led invasion; many were Democrats who did not want to appear reluctant
to prevent another potential Sept. 11 attack. Among those who voted in
favor of the war are some of Bush's chief critics, including Democratic
presidential contenders John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, and
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Since then, public sentiment
toward the war has changed dramatically. Almost three-fourths of people in
the U.S. supported the war when it began in March 2003, while one-fourth
opposed it, according to Gallup polling at the time. Last month, AP-Ipsos polling
found that not quite four in 10 people surveyed agreed with the decision to
go to war and six in 10 opposed - the same levels of support found by a
recent Gallup poll. The inability to find
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq did not help in maintaining support for
the war. The claim that Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons was a main
justification the administration used for the war. Public acceptance of the war
eroded as American casualties mounted and U.S. troops, initially focused on
Sunni insurgents, instead had to grapple with Sunni-Shiite violence. This
past week, the Pentagon said the violence was taking on aspects of a civil
war. Military officials agree
that the task of easing that bloodshed is best accomplished by Iraqi security
forces, once they become capable. Other blows to the once-popular
war effort were revelations of American forces abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu
Ghraib and the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha. Most recently there
have been reports of substandard care of wounded troops at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington. One political marker was
last October when Virginia Sen. John Warner declared the war was “drifting
sideways.” A prominent Republican on military issues, Warner stood beside
Bush in 2002 as the president signed into law the congressional authorization
for the war. But four years later, upon
returning from a trip to Iraq, Warner said he had lost confidence that the
Iraqi government was making progress and worried that sectarian violence had
consumed Baghdad. After the elections, Warner proposed
a congressional resolution stating opposition to the president's plan to
augment force levels. The resolution drowned amid partisan bickering and was
never voted on, but it attracted enough Republican support to worry the White
House that it was losing its support base. In another sign of the
changing times, news of al-Qaida member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession
that he masterminded Sept. 11 and plotted some 30 other attacks quickly gave
way to another development. House Democrats won their first vote on a war
spending bill that would demand the president pull troops out of Iraq before
September 2008. As that confrontation looms
in the full House, Bush's supporters say they will continue to review their
options to bring troops home. Young says regardless of
everything that has happened, he is not thinking of abandoning his president.
But when asked if the war is winnable, Young's response was more one of
optimism than anything else. “It has to be” winnable, he
said. “We can't let terrorists continue to threaten the United States.” External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6488599,00.html |