It was another day of questioning for Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Capitol Hill — and again the subject was President Bush's plan to send more than 21,000 additional troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.
As their House counterparts did Thursday, the members of an often skeptical Senate Armed Services Committee pressed Gates for more details and assurances on President Bush's plan to send more than 21,000 additional troops to Iraq.
Unlike the bitterness and sense of betrayal that many senators on the foreign relations panel expressed yesterday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, passions were much cooler on the Armed Services panel Friday. Gates, after all, has only been Defense secretary for three weeks, giving him a virtually clean slate when it comes to the Iraq war.
But the committee's new Democratic chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, made it very clear to Gates how sharply he disagrees with the president's decision to add more troops to Iraq:
"Our sending more troops to Iraq suggests that the future of Iraq is in our hands," Levin said, "when in reality it is in the hands of the Iraqis themselves."
That view differed sharply with the panel's new ranking member, Arizona Republican John McCain, who said a substantial and sustained increase in U.S. forces in Iraq is necessary.
"I commend the president for recognizing the mistakes of the past," McCain said, "and for outlining new steps on the military, economic and political fronts. I believe that together, these moves will give the Iraqis and America the best chance of success."
Gates maintained that the decision to add more U.S. forces came from the American commanders who are in Iraq.
"It would be a sublime yet historic irony," Gates said, "if those who believe the views of the military professionals were neglected at the onset of the war were now to dismiss the views of the military as irrelevant or wrong."
Gates characterized Iraq's leaders as "learning as they go" and committed to ending sectarian violence, saying they risk seeing their country fall apart. But asked what the United States would do if the Iraqis failed to make good on their commitments, Gates simply said he didn't know what those consequences would be.
The specter of a possible U.S. defeat in Iraq seemed to hang over the hearing. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham scolded his colleagues for even contemplating such a possibility.
"Criticisms," Graham said, "skepticism is the heart and soul of a democracy. But our statements are being viewed not just by the Iraqi government, but those who wish us harm throughout the world. And to my colleagues, I would ask at least in the short term here, that we measure our words, that we not have a political stampede to declare the war lost when it's not yet lost."
But Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy said Congress, not President Bush, should decide if there's to be an escalation in Iraq.
"Republicans and Democrats said they have been left out of the decision on Vietnam, we don't want that to happen again," Kennedy said. "And it's happening again, Mr. Secretary. And I think the American people, through their representatives, should have an opportunity to speak."
Gates said he understood — and he promised to "pass the message to the president."
Of President Bush's plan for more troops, Gates said, "I think he feels that he has the authority that he needs to proceed. And I think, quite honestly, that he believes that the — that sometimes the president has to take actions that contemporaneously don't have broad support of the American people, because he has a longer view."
Gates said it may be clear within months if a troop increase is working.
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