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Win McNamee/Getty Images
Senator
Ted Kennedy speaks on the U.S. involvement in Iraq at the National
Press Club today in Washington, DC.
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Fissures Grow on Eve
of Bush Speech on Iraq
By DAVID STOUT,
NYTimes on the Web, January 9, 2007
WASHINGTON -- On the eve of
President Bush’s planned speech on Iraq, both the White House and a prominent
Democratic critic of the president said the United States was at a decisive
moment, not just in Iraq but in American history.
“Iraq is the central front in the war on terror,” the White House spokesman,
Tony Snow, said today. “Why is it important? What does it mean?
What can success breed? What does failure mean?”
These are not just political questions, Mr. Snow said, but ones that will bear
on America’s security and its image of itself for years to come.
But Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, long one of the most outspoken
critics of the administration’s Iraq policy, said it was time for Congress to
reclaim its rightful power to decide whether the United States goes to war.
“That war is the overarching issue of our time, and American lives, American
values and America’s role in the world are all at stake,” Mr. Kennedy said today
in a speech at the National Press Club, where he called his vote against the war
in 2002 “the best vote I’ve cast in my 44 years in the United States Senate.”
The new Democratic Congressional leaders, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, have already voiced their opposition to
sending more combat troops to Iraq.
There was little, if anything, that was new in Mr. Snow’s remarks -- wait until
the president speaks on Wednesday night, he said in effect -- or in Mr.
Kennedy’s. But the starkly different views of the Iraq conflict
underscored again the fissures the war has carved, not just between the White
House and Democratic lawmakers but, to a lesser extent, within the ranks of
Republicans and Democrats.
Mr. Snow declined to discuss specifics of Mr. Bush’s speech, planned for
Wednesday, although the president is widely expected to ask for at least a
short-term increase of about 20,000 troops as part of a broader plan. Mr.
Snow said the speech would be “the beginning of an important consideration of
how we move forward in Iraq.”
Success there, Mr. Snow said, would “send a message to the world” that the
United States is in Iraq to secure liberty and offer “the definitive refutation
of terrorist tactics and strategies.”
As for Democrats, Mr. Snow said they must choose: “Number one, do you want
Iraq to succeed? And if so, what does that mean? And number two, do
you believe in supporting the troops, as you say, and how do you express that
support?”
Mr. Kennedy praised the “pride and valor” of American troops and said he and
other critics would always support them. But he recalled the American
agony of Vietnam four decades ago, asserting that Iraq could become another
“quagmire.”
“Listen to this comment from a high-ranking American official,” Mr. Kennedy
said, recalling a commitment to “help to lay the cornerstone for a diverse and
independent Asia” and to “stay the course.”
“This is not President Bush speaking,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It is President
Lyndon Johnson, 40 years ago, ordering a hundred thousand more American soldiers
to Vietnam.”
Mr. Kennedy has introduced legislation to specify that no more troops be sent to
Iraq, and that no additional dollars be spent on such an escalation, “unless and
until Congress approves the president’s plan.”
Mr. Kennedy is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, some of whose
Democratic members have more views more nuanced than his. The committee’s
new chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, for example, has said he would not
rule out supporting a plan to dispatch more troops, provided that the proposal
was tied to a broader strategy to begin reducing American involvement and
bringing troops home.
A Republican on the panel, Senator John McCain of Arizona, has taken the
politically unpopular stance of supporting a troop increase in Iraq. But
another Republican senator, Gordon Smith of Oregon, said recently he has lost
faith in the White House’s policy. (Mr. Smith is not on the Armed Services
Committee.)
Mr. Kennedy said the right course is obvious. “The American people sent a
clear message in November that we must change course in Iraq and begin to
withdraw our troops, not escalate their presence,” he said. “An
escalation, whether it is called a surge or any other name, is still an
escalation, and I believe it would be an immense new mistake.”
When Mr. Snow was asked to describe the difference between “surge” and
“escalation,” the latter being an emotionally charged word from the Vietnam era,
as “quagmire” is, he said people should shun “a one-word characterization.”
“As far as public opinion, the president will not shape policy according to
public opinion,” Mr. Snow said, “but he does understand that it’s important to
bring the public back to this war and restore public confidence and support for
the mission.”
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