Sen. Lincoln Chafee sharply questions the "shifting justifications" for the war on Iraq, saying the link between Saddam Hussein and terrorism remains unproven.

07/30/2003

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan chorus of senators scolded the Bush administration yesterday for what some described as vagueness and "low-balling" in its estimates of how many dollars and U.S. troops it will take to rebuild Iraq. Several senators warned that popular support for the reconstruction might be in jeopardy.

AP photo Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the administration's war policy, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that electricity and other public services were approaching pre-war levels.

The president's budget chief, his deputy defense secretary and his acting Army chief of staff declined to forecast their military spending needs for Iraq beyond this year, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they cannot be specific about costs and troop requirements that they cannot foresee.

"Oh, come on now!" exclaimed Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del. "Does anyone here at the table think that we're going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year? Raise your hand, any one of you. You know it's going to be more than that. See, you know it's going to be at least $2 1/2-billion a month. Give me a break, will you? When are you guys starting to be honest with us? Come on! I mean, this is ridiculous."

Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., was softer but still direct in his criticism: "We know that our credibility with the international community and the Iraqi people will be enhanced by a multiyear budget commitment. Yet we have taken inadequate steps toward realizing these objectives.

"We still lack a comprehensive plan," Lugar continued, for how to get enough resources for the rebuilding and "how to use them to maximum effect."

Republican Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee returned to his longstanding opposition to the invasion, voicing resentment over what he called "shifting justifications" for toppling the Iraqi regime.

At the same time, however, Lugar, Biden and others on the committee expressed their continuing support for the war and the rebuilding effort, even as they urged the administration to redouble its efforts to get more money and troops from other nations. They declared that progress in the rebuilding over the next few months is crucial, lest large numbers of Iraqis decide to support a guerrilla insurgency that, so far, has limited support.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the war policy, and Army Gen. John Keane did not dispute that. But both men said there are clear signs of progress in Iraq. Wolfowitz said, for example, that electricity and other public services are approaching pre-war levels. He stressed that "pre-war levels are nowhere near adequate" but said "real progress" has been made.

Keane testified that popular Iraqi support for the anti-American attacks is weak and getting weaker. Wolfowitz said that the recent killing of Saddam's two sons and the capture of other top officials of the old regime are indications that U.S. forces are getting more intelligence tips from Iraqis and making better use of them. Both emphasized, however, that the road to reconstruction will be long, costly and dangerous and will depend in part on administration success in recruiting help from other nations.

Chafee said that in the pre-war debate, the administration issued "a steady drum beat of weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction." But he noted that Wolfowitz mentioned that issue only once yesterday, stressing instead what Chafee called "allegations" that a rebuilt Iraq "will help with our war on terrorism. But we just haven't seen the proof of any linkage between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida."

Wolfowitz answered that the administration's pre-war arguments for the invasion included, among others, the threat that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might pose to the United States if they ever got into the hands of terrorists.

In an unusual expression of anger, Chafee said, "I really resent it" when supporters of the war argue that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cast the threat from Iraq in a new light, "when the evidence is to the contrary." Chafee cited a l998 letter that Wolfowitz and others had sent to President Bill Clinton. It said in part, "the strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."

"Senator, you're misrepresenting what I said in that letter," Wolfowitz replied. "It is true I thought, from the end of the Gulf war until Sept. 11, 2001, that it was important for the United States to help Iraqis get rid of that regime. And that is a policy of regime change. But I did not believe that it was either necessary or justified for us to use large-scale American military forces to do the job. At the end of the Gulf war, all it would have taken was a military application of U.S. air power" and some U.S. artillery.

"Sept. 11 changed the stakes, in my view dramatically, and it changed the whole way of looking at an uncertain but still disturbing threat of the combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism," Wolfowitz said.

Asked in an interview later whether he accepted Wolfowitz's description of his position before Sept. 11, Chafee replied, "I dispute that vigorously." But Chafee said he agreed with Wolfowitz on one point in his testimony yesterday: that the post-Gulf war policy of containing the Iraqi threat had its costs. One was the broad resentment in Muslim nations of the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, which Osama Bin Laden exploited in his anti-American propaganda.

In a separate interview, Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat, said he accepts the word of U.S. military commanders that they have sufficient troops in Iraq to counter the low-level insurgency and gradually make the nation secure enough for civil and political reconstruction to proceed.

Armed Services Committee member Reed, who recently visited Iraq, also said he agreed with Wolfowitz's report that military commanders believe some elements of the rebuilding effort are further along in Iraq today than they were at a comparable moment after hostilities ended in Kosovo.

Reed also agreed with Wolfowitz that the northern and southern sectors of Iraq are notably stable. "But the geopolitical heart of the country is in Baghdad and the 'Sunni Triangle' around it," said Reed. That is also the area of greatest danger to the rebuilding enterprise during the next, crucial months in Iraq.