Washington – The partisan furor over the Iraq war ratcheted up sharply on Capitol Hill on Thursday, as an influential House Democrat on military affairs called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and Republicans escalated their attacks against the Bush administration’s critics.
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a Vietnam combat veteran who voted for the Iraq war and has grown increasingly frustrated with the administration’s post-invasion handling of the protracted battles against insurgents, said the conflict had become a “flawed policy wrapped in an illusion” and that the 153,000 American troops in Iraq should be pulled out within six months.
Murtha, who retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve after 37 years of service, denounced “people with five deferments” – a pointed reference to Vice President Dick Cheney – who dared to challenge veterans like him about their views.
Murtha’s proposal, which goes well beyond the phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq that other moderate Democrats have proposed, stunned many Republicans, who quickly held their own news conference to criticize the plan.
Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois said in a statement that Murtha and Democratic supporters had “adopted a policy of cut and run.”
“They would prefer that the United States surrender to terrorists who would harm innocent Americans,” Hastert said.
The increasing vitriol was the latest sign of eroding support in Congress for the war and sharpening debate over President Bush’s use of prewar intelligence on Iraq’s supposedly unconventional weapons to justify the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003.
This week, leading Republicans joined Democrats in sending a subtle message to the White House of their growing impatience with the pace of the war by requiring periodic reports to Congress.
In a speech Wednesday night, Cheney said that senators who had suggested that the administration had manipulated the intelligence were making “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
Senate Republicans had joined Democrats in approving a plan to press the Bush administration to provide more public information about the course of the war in Iraq and to shift more responsibility for securing the country to the Iraqi government.
The ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Murtha, 73, has earned bipartisan respect for his work on military issues during his three decades in Congress.
“When he talks, I listen,” said Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
In recent months, the blunt-spoken Murtha has voiced concerns raised by constituents and from his own conversations with troops and commanders about shortages of body armor and other equipment to fears that Iraq’s security forces were not sufficiently trained.