Republican Defends Criticisms of Iraq
Policy
Washington Post
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A06
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) strongly criticized yesterday the White House's
new line of attack against critics of its Iraq policy, saying that "the Bush
administration must understand that each American has a right to question our
policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them."
With President Bush leading the charge, administration officials have lashed
out at Democrats who have accused the administration of manipulating
intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. Bush has suggested that critics are
hurting the war effort, telling U.S. troops in Alaska on Monday that critics
"are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. And that's
irresponsible."
Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran and a potential presidential candidate in 2008,
countered in a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations that the Vietnam War
"was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their
country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the
administrations in power until it was too late."
"To question your government is not unpatriotic -- to not question your
government is unpatriotic," Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in
Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. "America owes its men and
women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices."
Hagel said Democrats have an obligation to be constructive in their
criticism, but he accused the administration of "dividing the country" with its
rhetorical tactics.
Hagel supported the 2002 resolution to authorize military action in Iraq,
but he has emerged as a strong skeptic of the Bush administration's handling of
the war. In his speech, he called for a regional security conference to help
invest Iraq's neighbors in the effort to stabilize the country.
At one point, while answering a question from the audience about Syria,
Hagel suggested that the Middle East is worse off after the invasion because
the administration failed to anticipate the consequences of removing Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. "You could probably argue it is worse in many ways in
the Middle East because of consequences and ripple effects," he said.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined other administration
officials yesterday in attacking critics of the Iraq war for attempting to
"rewrite" history, warning that setting an arbitrary deadline for withdrawing
U.S. troops could "give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply hold
on long enough, that they can outlast us."
At the same time, Rumsfeld acknowledged what he called honest mistakes in
the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq. "There's no doubt in my
mind that people made honest mistakes in . . . the pieces of that intelligence
that were presented at the United Nations," he said at a news briefing.
Rumsfeld described an evolution of U.S. policy toward Iraq embraced by
Democrats and Republicans. He read several quotes from 1998 from then-President
Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright
and national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger. They predicted that
Hussein, if unchecked, would again use weapons of mass destruction.
However, many of the comments cited by Rumsfeld were used to justify
continued sanctions on Iraq, not to invade it. Moreover, the Clinton
administration officials did not cite the problematic intelligence that formed
the core of the Bush administration's case for an invasion, such as allegations
that Iraq sought uranium in Africa and tried to obtain aluminum tubes as part
of a resurgent nuclear program.
Rumsfeld also pointed to congressional actions in 1998 and 2002 calling for
Hussein's removal. But the 1998 law, signed by Clinton, said "nothing in this
act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to use of United States
Armed Forces" to implement it.
Staff writer Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.
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