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Moving the Goalpost

Democrats Step Up Criticism of Iraq Findings

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

Published: September 9, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — Leading Democrats today pre-emptively assailed the expected findings on Iraq due this week from Gen. David H. Petraeus as “dead, flat wrong” and said President Bush’s likely call for continued patience in the war would simply extend an “unconscionable” and “completely unacceptable” policy.

The pointed comments from the Democrats, including Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential hopeful, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, seemed intended to undercut the impact of the much-awaited Congressional testimony by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the United States ambassador in Baghdad.

“This president has no plan how to win and/or how to leave,” said Mr. Biden, before whose committee General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker will testify on Tuesday. He accused Mr. Bush of putting American troops “into the middle of a civil war to maintain the status quo,” adding, “that is unconscionable, and he’s wrong.”

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker will first appear on Monday before a joint session of the House Armed Services and International Relations Committees. They plan to hold a news conference on Wednesday. They are expected to describe uneven military progress and still-unsatisfactory political progress.

Sometime before the end of the week, Mr. Bush is expected to announce his conclusions about the success of the eight-month-old troop increase that now has more than 160,000 American troops in Iraq and about how long they should stay, and in what capacity.

Democrats, in their appearances on news programs today, laid down markers. “This administration is playing for delay,” Mr. Kennedy said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation”. He called that “completely unacceptable.”

But Republicans laid down their own markers. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on “Fox News Sunday” that the troop increase was “undeniably working” and that “the only way we’re going to lose this war is to have politicians in Washington undercut the surge.”

Rather than withdrawing, he said, “Now’s the time to pour it on.”

The Democratic criticism of the new Iraq assessment was particularly forceful, although the Democrats did not attack General Petraeus personally. Mr. Biden said that he respected the general, but that his expected analysis was “dead, flat wrong.” — Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Kennedy asserted that General Petraeus would effectively be drawing up a report card on his own work.

The Democrats repeatedly criticized the statistics showing progress in Iraq. “All of the statistics are questionable,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said on Fox And they insisted that success in Iraq depended on political reconciliation that had been promised but failed to materialize.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that while American troops had scored successes in parts of Iraq, it was dangerous to think this could readily be replicated nationwide. “You can take a tactical success and misread it, as we did in Vietnam,” he said on the ABC News program “This Week.”

Mr. Biden, too, made a Vietnam allusion on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” saying he believed “absolutely, positively, unequivocally” that absent a change of course, helicopters would be evacuating Americans from the Green Zone in Baghdad within two years.

The Democrats pointed to new polls showing that most Americans favor a timetable for troop withdrawal and want large numbers of troops withdrawn within a year, if not sooner.

But the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found a modest increase in the number of Americans — 35 percent, up from 29 percent in May — who say the troop buildup is improving the situation in Iraq.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Republican presidential candidate, said that he understood Americans’ frustrations with the war in Iraq, but that a premature withdrawal would have disastrous effects.

“Americans are sad, they’re frustrated, they’re angry and they want out,” he said on ABC. “I want us out, too, but I want us out with honor.”

Mr. Bush appears to be open to a recommendation of a small troop withdrawal. Military analysts say, in any case, that the strains on American military manpower make a troop drawdown likely by next spring.

The Democrats, whose repeated efforts to curtail the American presence in Iraq have fallen short, now say they are willing to accept a less rigid framework for troop withdrawals.

Mr. Biden acknowledged the political limits on his party, even with the Congressional majority it has held since the November midterm elections.

“This is the president’s war,” he said. “Unless we get 67 votes to override his veto, there’s nothing we can do to stop this war, but we must, we must, we must protect these troops.”

NY TIMES