Rice urges Congress not to limit Bush authority in Iraq
25 February 2007 (AP Worldstream)
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Secretary of State Condoleezza said Sunday it would be a mistake for Congress to micromanage the Iraq war, and she encouraged lawmakers to support President George W. Bush's troop increase.
"I would hope that Congress would recognize that it's very important for them to have the oversight role," Rice said. "But when it comes to the execution of policy in the field, there has to be a clear relationship between the commander in chief and the commanders in the field."
Many Democrats, now the majority party on Capitol Hill, are unhappy with Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops to try to quell the violence in Baghdad. They are considering several options, including revoking Congress' 2002 vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq.
Another proposal under consideration would limit U.S. troops to fighting al-Qaida terrorists, training the Iraqi security forces, maintaining Iraq's borders and pulling out combat forces.
Rice said it would be a major mistake to disrupt the chain of command.
"Then you're going to have the worst of micromanagement of military affairs. And it's always served us badly in the past," she said.
Rice said it is impossible to distinguish what is going in Iraq from the larger fight against al-Qaida.
"Some of these car bombs may indeed be the work of an organization like al-Qaida," she said of the violence that continues to rock Baghdad.
"I think it's best to leave the flexibility of what to do on the ground to commanders on the ground who understand the situation, who understand the intricacies and the relationship among these various tasks that the American armed forces have to do," Rice said.
She appeared on "This Week" on ABC.
US Democrats seek to gut Bush's Iraq war powers
WASHINGTON, 25 February 2007 (Middle East Online)
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US Democrats have vowed to handcuff President George W. Bush's power to wage war in Iraq, raising the stakes and risking a constitutional showdown in their battle to bring troops home.
Key senators are aiming to repeal the 2002 congressional authorization permitting Bush to go to war, as they challenge his last-ditch surge of 21,500 troops into Iraq, and aim to end US involvement in the unpopular war.
"We gave him the authority to take out weapons of mass destruction which never existed, take down Saddam who is dead, and force compliance to UN resolutions that are already enforced," Democratic Senator Joseph Biden said in a CNN interview Friday.
"This president's policy is driving us into a box canyon, we have got to redefine the mission," he said.
The move was still being finalized Friday and it was not clear if the measure would be officially introduced next week. Draft plans would seek to limit the US mission in Iraq to battling terrorists, guarding Iraq's borders and training Iraqi troops, a congressional source said.
The legislation will also call for a pullout of US combat troops from Iraq by March 2008 -- in line with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group last year, political news website Politico.com reported.
The Senate move is the latest attempt by Democrats, who grabbed control of Congress last year, to curtail Bush's war powers, and end US involvement in a war in which 3,100 US troops have lost their lives.
But it already looked unlikely Friday that Democrats had the votes to pass a measure which could spark an unprecedented showdown between Congress and the president over lawmakers capacity to shape military and foreign policy.
They have already failed to pile up the necessary 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to enforce debate on a non-binding resolution opposing Bush's surge plan announced last month.
And there was not firm agreement about how to proceed with the new plan.
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia told The New York Times that Democrats had agreed that Congress must reassert its authority, but they had not yet figured out precisely how to do it.
The White House said it would "of course" fight any move to curtail Bush's powers, and argued US forces were in Iraq at the invitation of the government in Baghdad and authorized by the United Nations.
"The authorization in the Security Council resolution is clear," White House deputy spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell dared Democrats to take the politically dangerous step of withhold funding for the war, even when troops are in combat.
"You can't unring a bell," McConnell told reporters when asked about Democratic plans to adjust the authorization.
"At this point the only thing Congress can meaningfully do ... is decide whether or not to fund the operation," he said.
Bush's Republican backers argue that Bush should be given the chance to see whether his surge plan, sending extra troops into Baghdad and restive Al-Anbar province, works.
But Levin, previewing the Democratic effort last week on Fox television, said the authorization had been overtaken by events.
"It's wide open, telling the president he can go to Iraq and basically carry out any mission that he wants to," said Levin.
"One thought is that we should limit the mission to a support mission -- in other words, an antiterrorist mission to go after Al-Qaeda in Iraq, to support and train the Iraqi army, to protect our own diplomatic personnel and other personnel in Iraq."
The 2002 joint resolution of Congress authorizes Bush to use US troops as he determines necessary and appropriate to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq."
It also says troops can be used to "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq."
"The second part of that section, on authorization, is still important and envisioned the changing nature there," Fratto argued.
Though Senate Democrats have struggled to rebuke Bush, their counterparts in the House of Representatives have been more successful: a non-binding resolution criticizing Bush's war plan passed last week by a 246-182 vote.