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US News & World ReportBush Attempt to Rally GOP Fizzles
By Silla Brush
Mon Jul 16, 11:08 AM ET
The Bush administration's weeklong attempt to rally Republican allies on Capitol Hill to stick by the president's Iraq policy has fallen short.
The president dispatched national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk to wayward Republicans. And he personally took a strong stance in press conferences this past week.
But still the ranks of Republican dissenters seem only to grow with the passing weeks. On Friday afternoon, after the Senate paused in its Iraq debate, two of the upper chamber's elder statesmen, Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Warner of Virginia, unveiled legislation requiring Bush to draw up a plan by mid-October that would significantly narrow the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq.
"I continue to counsel the president and his administration to move now to construct a more sustainable policy in Iraq that reduces our troop commitments and transitions away from the mission of interposing ourselves between sectarian factions," Lugar said in a prepared speech set for the Senate floor. "I believe there is strong evidence that the Iraqi government and political system will not achieve necessary political accommodations in a short time frame."
A Last-Ditch Plea to a Wavering Party By David Nather
Mon Jul 16, 7:25 AM ET
Last Tuesday, after hearing Vice President Dick Cheney make his pitch for the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy at a lunch for Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine took a telephone call from another top administration official. It was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking her to wait until September to call for any changes in the strategy.
Collins listened politely, and then did exactly what she had planned to do before the call. She introduced an amendment to the Defense authorization bill that would require the administration to start changing the strategy.
Earlier that day, Rice also phoned Maine’s other senator, Republican Olympia J. Snowe, with the same request: Wait until September. That call didn’t pay off, either. Snowe became a cosponsor of a Democratic measure that would require President Bush to start pulling troops out of Iraq in four months.
But for every Collins and Snowe, there is also a Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who has doubts about the progress of the war but isn’t ready for a head-on confrontation with the president. His idea is to adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which would make redeployment of troops a goal, but only if numerous other conditions are met first. His proposal probably can’t win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, though. And for now he is sticking with most of the GOP caucus to defeat other measures that would force Bush’s hand.
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