Cracks appear in party support

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's plan to deploy more US troops to Iraq drew rebukes from a range of congressional Republicans yesterday, a break from the lock-step support for the war that the president has long enjoyed from members of his own party.

A number of once-supportive Republican senators, including Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Gordon Smith of Oregon, went on record yesterday opposing an escalation in troop levels.

"This is the president's Hail Mary pass," Smith said after the speech. "We are extending an ineffective tactic to further the status quo."

Bush can still rely on the strong support of most of his party's leadership in Congress, and the number of Republican defectors is not large enough to give Democrats the veto-proof margin they would need to take full control of war policy.

But if a sizeable number of Republicans join Democrats in opposing the president's plan, Bush could find himself increasingly isolated as he pursues a strategy that the public is largely opposing.

In addition to the senators' opposition, seven rank-and-file GOP House members sent a letter to the president imploring him to reconsider his strategy. They said that past force increases haven't quelled the violence in Baghdad.

Even Senator John W. Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong White House ally, voiced concerns about the plan. He said he will draft a resolution calling on Bush to increase troops only if he's willing to endorse the major recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for a major rethinking of the administration's foreign policy.

"Young men and women of US forces and coalition forces should not be caught in the crossfire of a civil war prompted by who should have succeeded Mohammed in -- what is it? -- 650 AD?" said Warner, a Virginia Republican.

With Democrats in control of Congress for the first time in Bush's presidency, the president has never before needed members of his own party as he does now.

But the GOP response last night displayed the deep frustration felt by many in the party, after years in which the president has asked for the public's patience in fighting a war that many people feel has strayed far off course.

"This goes all the way back to four years ago, when the president told us we had to go to war over weapons of mass destruction," said Representative Walter Jones Jr., a North Carolina Republican who drafted the House members' letter to the president. "I don't think the president is listening."

Republican leaders in the House and Senate are relying on the party's traditional advantage on issues of national security to keep Republicans in the fold.

"We know with certainty that a precipitous, hasty withdrawal guarantees a strategic failure in Iraq and across the region," said Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

Some in the party say they're still willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, but signaled that their patience has limits.

"Our support for the Iraqi people must be matched by a commitment from the country's government to taking full responsibility for its future," said Senator John E. Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican.

But Republican skeptics, including Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, say the gap between the president's rhetoric and the reality of events leaves them convinced that Bush is pursuing the wrong options.

"This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost," Hagel said. "More American troops, treasure and casualties will not change this reality. It will make it worse."