The Senate prods Bush over Iraq
Asks prospects for withdrawal; appeals eyed for detainees
WASHINGTON -- In a stinging rebuke to President Bush's war strategy, the Senate called on the White House yesterday to provide regular updates on the conditions for withdrawal in Iraq and voted to allow some terrorists convicted by military tribunals at US detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to appeal their military verdicts in civilian courts.
Both the Iraq proposal and the Guantanamo provision, which allows a terror suspect to appeal if a military tribunal sentences him to death or more than 10 years in prison, passed by overwhelming margins. The rare bipartisan vote signals that Republicans and Democrats will no longer give the White House carte blanche in applying its wartime authority.
Sponsored by Senator John Warner of Virginia, the influential Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the Iraq amendment stopped short of demanding a timetable for withdrawal, as Democrats had wanted. But the amendment, cosponsored by Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, declares that ''US military forces should not stay in Iraq any longer than required and the people of Iraq should so be advised."
Warner called the vote a ''strong bipartisan message to the world" that it was time for Iraqis to take control.
''The coalition forces, most particularly the United States and Great Britain, have done their job," Warner said after the vote. ''And now we expect in return that [the Iraqis] take charge of their nation and run it and form a democracy and prevent any vestige of a civil war from taking place."
The measures won't reach Bush's desk unless the House also adopts them -- and some think that's a long shot.
''This probably won't pass the House, but even so it sends a signal that Senate Republicans are becoming more demanding," said James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. ''Republican senators are more actively second-guessing the administration."
Added to a military spending bill, Warner's amendment calls for Bush to give public progress reports on the war every three months, and sets 2006 as the deadline for the United States to give Iraqis responsibility for their own security. ''It is our intent to create the conditions in that year for the phased redeployment of the United States forces from Iraq," it stated.
The amendment also urges Bush to press Iraq's political and religious groups to work out their differences -- ''essential for defeating the insurgency in Iraq," according to the amendment.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he understands lawmakers' desire for more information, but he warned against rushing US troops home before the Iraqis are ready to fight.
''Timing of the handover of responsibility to Iraqis depends on conditions on the ground," Rumsfeld said. ''And already some responsibilities are being assumed by the Iraqi security forces. We must be careful not to give terrorists the false hope that if they can simply hold on long enough, that they can outlast us."
Repeating a recent White House theme, Rumsfeld lashed out at Democrats who are accusing Bush of exaggerating intelligence and misleading the country about the rationale for going to war. Rumsfeld quoted prominent Democrats and Republicans who saw the same intelligence as the White House and concurred that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- which have yet to be found -- were an intolerable threat.
''People who are willing to risk their lives [in the military] need to know the truth," he said. ''They need to understand that they are there based on decisions that were made in good faith by responsible people."
Still, Warner said his amendment, approved 79 to 19, sends a ''very powerful statement" to the Iraqis that American forces have done what they can and Iraqis themselves must now stand up against the insurgency. He said he was ''very grateful" for the widespread support. Of the 12 senators from New England, Democrats Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Democrat Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont were the only ones to vote against the amendment. Staff members said the senators did not believe the amendment was strong enough.
Others said the vote underscored growing public demands for a clear exit strategy.
''After two-and-a-half years of insurgency warfare in Iraq, it is a stunning indictment of the Bush administration that this Senate has to ask for a plan," said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island. ''And we're asking on behalf of the American people. Because there is disquiet with Iraq."
Indeed, public opinion polls indicate that support for Bush's handing of the war has plummeted in recent months as US military deaths have climbed past 2,000 and increasingly sophisticated insurgent attacks seem to continue unabated. While Democrats have been more critical of the war, the White House's GOP allies in Congress are now showing deepening signs of angst.
Those concerns seem to extend to the president's handling of his overall wartime authority, including how to mete out justice to suspected members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Immediately after approving Warner's amendment, senators approved, by an 84-to-14 tally, a second measure sponsored by Senator Lindsey O. Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a military judge in the Air Force Reserves. Graham's proposal would grant convicted terrorists limited access to civilian courts to appeal their convictions, a way to provide more oversight of the judicial process for detainees, which has been the focus of international condemnation. Kennedy and Leahy were the lone New England no votes.
Graham said the amendment ''allows every detainee under our control to have a day in court" and can help prevent inmates and their lawyers from clogging the courts with what he deemed frivolous petitions -- the anticipated byproduct of a Supreme Court decision giving them the right to appeal their detention.
Rights groups applauded lawmakers yesterday for taking on the issue, but said Graham's measure does more harm than good because it effectively denies due process to other terror suspects who haven't been tried or whose sentences don't fit the standard.
It also supersedes the high court's ruling and bars detainees from petitioning civilian courts about their original incarceration, critics charged. The Bush administration has reserved the right to hold war detainees indefinitely without trial and has fought to keep terror suspects out of the US justice system.
''Instead of fixing the military commission problems, they narrow the scope of review," said Elise Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, a liberal nonprofit organization. ''The real problem is that the administration claims it can hold people forever, without charging them and without due process of law."
Information from Reuters was included in this report.Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. 