The June 30 Iraq deadline: Even GOP lawmakers worry
WASHINGTON (AP) — A growing number of lawmakers are worrying out loud about the Bush administration’s ironclad deadline for handing over political control to Iraq this summer, with even Republicans questioning who will rule and whether the Iraqis will be up to it.
The worst day of post-invasion carnage so far — Tuesday’s coordinated bombings at Shiite Muslim shrines — has heightened fears over sticking to the June 30 handover even as Iraqis make little progress toward deciding who will be in their new government.
“The issue of whom sovereignty is to be transferred to is not just a thorny intellectual issue,” said Michigan’s Sen. Carl Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If the people of Iraq don’t support their sovereign government, even greater chaos could result.”
“It seems like a tough target to hit,” GOP House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Joel Hefley of Colorado said of the June deadline.
“I’m convinced that the timetable … is unrealistic,” said Missouri Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton.
Lawmakers commented when the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, testified before their committees with other senior defense officials Wednesday and Thursday.
Critics have charged the June 30 date is arbitrary and appears geared more toward helping President Bush in his November re-election bid than helping the Iraqi people.
Lowering the U.S. profile in Iraq well ahead of November could be seen as progress, and could blunt the war as a campaign issue. The American death toll was more than 540 and the war’s cost — already more than $100 billion — is also a sore topic among American voters facing huge federal budget deficits. Others believe that if violence were to worsen in the country once the sovereignty handover was complete, that could hurt Bush politically.
Iraqi domestic politics is no small factor in the timetable.
The 25-member U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council now serving has been dismissed by some as a tool of the American-led occupation coalition. And it is taking months to settle a dispute over how to select the future government amid maneuvering by the long-repressed Shiite majority, the long-autonomous Kurds and the Sunnis minority that fell from power along with Saddam Hussein.
Council member Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurd, said no serious talks have started yet on who will take over from Americans on June 30. One option, he said, is expanding the council to include representation from more political parties and more regions.
Though some Iraqis have said they would accept a delay, Iraqis in general have made no secret that they want to get out from under foreign occupation soon.
“The Governing Council and the (occupation authorities) promised the Iraqi people sovereignty on a date certain, and we will give it to them,” the U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said recently.
Even once the politician handover is done, some 100,000 U.S. military troops will remain for an undetermined time, providing security and fighting an ongoing insurgency.
Some questions put to Abizaid showed widespread confusion about what the handover actually will mean.
“What does transferring sovereignty mean?” Hefley asked Abizaid and Peter Rodman, assistant defense secretary for international affairs.
Rodman answered that “it changes the legal status of our presence there.”
“Nothing changes dramatically on July 1 as opposed to June 30” in terms of Iraqi desire to have continued training and support until they are able to take on full responsibility, Rodman said.
“I’m not sure that the members of this committee or the American people know exactly how things are going to work once authority is passed over to the Iraqi government,” Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Thursday.
McCain asked who would be in charge if violence erupts that Iraqi police are unable to contain.
Abizaid said Americans will be in military command for an undetermined time as they train Iraqi commanders, now being eyed to make sure that they have no criminal past and that they will support a new government.
Although the recruiting of 200,000 Iraqi security officers has brought Iraq closer toward meeting “numerical requirements,” it is “difficult for me to tell you … when they will be good enough to assume partial responsibility, full responsibility, etc.,” Abizaid said.
“That’s “the difference between saying somebody is in control and actually being in control, is that accurate?” asked Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
“I’d say that’s accurate, sir,” Abizaid said.