Congress Wants Answers on Bush’s Plans for Iraq

An increasingly anxious Congress has summoned Bush administration officials to testify this week on their plans for quelling violence in Iraq and for handing power over to Iraqis by June 30.

Three congressional committees have scheduled hearings that Republican lawmakers hope will produce information they need to explain President Bush’s Iraq policy to increasingly restive constituents. Democrats say the hearings will provide a forum for criticizing what they say have been the administration’s missteps.

“The country is polarized,” said Rep. James A. Leach (R-Iowa), who had voted against the decision to go to war. “The issue to me is how we proceed from here.”

“I think there certainly is a nervousness because of the events of the last few weeks,” said Republican lobbyist Vin Weber, a former Minnesota congressman, referring to surging violence and rising U.S. casualties in Iraq. “Members of Congress have to go home. They talk to the members of the local news media. Sometimes there’s somebody in or near their district who has been killed.”

Still, he said, “I don’t believe the fundamental confidence of the Republicans on the Hill in the administration has been shaken.”

Because Congress is controlled by Republicans who remain loyal to Bush, the proceedings are unlikely to produce the sort of dramatic testimony heard at the Sept. 11 commission’s hearings earlier this month. No administration official is expected to offer an apology along the lines of that given to the families of Sept. 11 victims and the American people by Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official in the Bush administration.

But the hearings may force the administration to provide a more detailed picture of its plans in Iraq and may bring to its attention outside ideas for sharing the burdens of war and reconstruction.

In two days of hearings beginning Tuesday, the House and Senate Armed Services committees will hear from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, considered the intellectual architect of the war; Marc Grossman, undersecretary of State for political affairs; and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which plans three days of hearings starting Tuesday, will question an array of former government officials and academic experts on postwar reconstruction efforts. Committee staffers said they had had a hard time, however, getting senior administration officials to appear. Wolfowitz reportedly had agreed to appear before the committee but then declined the invitation, according to a committee source.

Officials are likely to face a barrage of questions about the administration’s decision to allow the United Nations to take the lead in selecting an interim Iraqi government; about its plans for quelling a revolt among followers of the Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr; and about its strategy for putting down resistance in the so-called Sunni Triangle, west of Baghdad.

“There are tens of thousands of patriotic Americans who will go to bed tonight with a pit in their stomach,” said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a speech Thursday on postwar policy in Iraq. He said these Americans were “torn between their instinct to blindly support our president and a nagging doubt that he does not have a workable plan for either victory or to bring their sons and daughters home safely.”

The sessions will be Congress’ first public hearings on the planned June 30 transition, when the U.S. administration is scheduled to hand over power to the Iraqis.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been under growing pressure from congressional Democrats to hold hearings on the administration’s plans.

Lugar, one of the most respected foreign-policy experts in Washington, has been faulted by Democrats for failing to more forcefully challenge the White House on policies that Lugar has said publicly he believes are flawed. At the same time, he is under pressure from Republicans not to give a platform to witnesses who might criticize the president in the middle of an election campaign.

“Had I remained chairman of the committee, we would have been having on a continuous basis extensive hearings on every aspect of our involvement in Iraq,” Biden said in an interview. Asked why he thought Lugar, whom he described as a “first-rate guy,” had not done so, Biden paused for a long moment before replying: “He’s in a tough spot.”

Lugar was on vacation last week, and could not be reached for comment. But one of his aides said the senator scheduled the hearings because the administration had not consulted adequately with Congress.

“Congress would like to know what is going on, because there hasn’t been any sharing,” said the aide, who spoke on condition his name not be used. “Time is running out in terms of the transition. If the administration is not prepared, or does not have the planning in place, these hearings will focus the effort to do that. It will be a significant week.”

An aide to one of the Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee acknowledged that the administration had enjoyed great latitude and little congressional oversight of its policies in Iraq. But the dynamic has changed, he said, because of the Shiite uprising in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala, as well as the ongoing attacks on U.S. contractors and troops by Sunni guerrillas and the kidnapping of foreign nationals.

Bush helped assuage some doubts during his nationally televised news conference Tuesday, said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a strong supporter of the president and the war in Iraq. The president, Hunter added, delivered a powerful explanation for why the United States was committed to building democracy in Iraq.

But “the images of war are very compelling images,” said Hunter, who noted that they were upsetting Americans. “You have to understand that, and accept that, and not hold it against people,” he added.

Before the spring recess, Hunter said, Congress was receiving routine briefings from the Pentagon on the situation in Iraq. However, after two weeks away from the capital -- weeks in which the nation’s media carried images of dead or wounded U.S. soldiers and burning Humvees -- Congress is feeling out of touch, he said. Lawmakers want to know more about the administration’s plans for increasing troop strength and fashioning a response to the violence, he said.

“We’re going to want the administration to brief us thoroughly now,” Hunter said. “This handoff is pretty important, and it is amazing how many people think we are leaving Iraq on June 30.”

Few congressional Republicans are willing to express publicly the frustration they speak of privately over the administration’s reluctance to consult with Congress on its plans in Iraq. But many share the sentiments of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican and close ally of the president.

“I think it is fair to say, with the continuing news coverage of challenge and tragedy coming out [of] Iraq, people are getting uneasy,” Pawlenty said. “Are people anxious about Iraq? The answer is yes.”

Pawlenty, Minnesota chairman of Bush’s reelection effort, was one of a handful of governors asked by the White House to visit Iraq in February in hopes that they would return and help make the case for being there.

However, the governor has since been attending funerals of Minnesotans killed in Iraq. Now, he notes that “the secret to successful relationships is matching expectations. If it is true that we’re going to have to have a significant presence in Iraq for the near and immediate future, we should just say that. We need to be clear about why we’re doing that.”

“At this time,” said Leach, the Iowa congressman, “it is even more important for top officials in this administration to reach out to the expertise that exists in the American public and ask for advice. One has the feeling of some insularity” in the administration.

“This is a good time for a reality check with the American public” -- a public, Leach said, that while divided on the wisdom of going to war, was eager to see the U.S. succeed in rebuilding Iraq.

Weber said he expected the Republican leadership to keep this week’s hearings from causing political damage to Bush. Congress has the responsibility of oversight, Weber said, “but managing this transition of the next 70 days, until June 30, is the job of the administration. The Congress has to be very careful about what sort of distractions they are going to put before the administration.” At stake, Weber said, is nothing less than “the survival of our way of life.”

Biden voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, but has since harshly criticized the administration for failing to marshal a broad international coalition and for failing to have a clear postwar plan. He said that by probing and pushing the administration publicly, Congress might be able to help it firm up plans for a transition that seemed only to begin to gel last week, with the White House’s endorsement of an expanded role for the United Nations.

The hearings, Biden said, would “at least give vent to both sides of the debate within the administration” about how much power the U.S. should cede to the United Nations or other international groups in Iraq. Biden said they might also “indirectly create pressure for the president to take a side, to reject the advice of the people who have given him such bad advice so far.”