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News :: Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Regime : Right Wing |
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Crumbling Conservative Support for War: Republican Congressman Calls For Withdrawal From Iraq |
Current rating: 0 |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
10 Jan 2005
|
Coble, who has represented the 6th District since 1984, says he voted to give Bush sweeping war-making powers assuming the administration had a post-invasion strategy.
"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it." |
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican and close ally of President Bush, says the United States should consider pulling out of war-ravaged Iraq.
Coble is one of the first members of Congress to suggest a withdrawal publicly.
The 10-term congressman said in an interview with the News & Record of Greensboro that he's "fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq."
Support among Coble's 6th District constituents has also waned, his office said.
The dean of the state's congressional delegation said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government.
Coble, who has represented the 6th District since 1984, says he voted to give Bush sweeping war-making powers assuming the administration had a post-invasion strategy.
"If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me," he said. "I'd like to see it."
The congressman said he thought Bush was correct in attacking Iraq, and that he and most of his constituents still believe it was the right decision because "we've done a lot of good over there."
That includes capturing Saddam Hussein, "the international terrorist, the tyrant, the snake," he said.
But a troop withdrawal should be an option if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to "shoulder more of the heavy lifting" for its own security, Coble said.
There has been little or no indication that the Iraqi government can do that, he said.
"What we have are Iraqis killing Iraqis and American troops," Coble said. "All I'm saying is that a troop withdrawal ought to be an option. It ought to be placed on the table for consideration.
"I'm going to keep talking about this," he said.
Coble, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said he may broach the idea to the panel.
The congressman from Greensboro said he is aware that few members of Congress have said openly that the country should consider withdrawing from Iraq. Republican Rep. James A. Leach of Iowa may be the only other GOP congressman to call for a pullout, he said.
Leach said on the House floor more than a year ago that the United States should begin a withdrawal that would be complete by the end of 2004.
Although many Democrats in Congress have sharply criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, as well as its conduct of the war, most say the United States must stay until the Iraqi government is strong enough to defend itself.
Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination, called for a U.S. troop withdrawal to be accomplished in 90 days.
Insurgent violence against Iraqi security forces and Americans has increased as the Jan. 30 date for the country's national elections draws closer.
More than 1,200 Americans have been killed since U.S. forces first occupied Baghdad in May 2003, when Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. The number includes at least 886 killed since U.S. forces captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13, 2003.
According to figures compiled by Coble's office, 31 military men and women from North Carolina had died in Iraq as of Dec. 11, and 279 had been wounded.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Cardinal Says Bush Broke Iraq Promise |
by Frances D'emilio
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Jan 2005
|
VATICAN CITY -- The Italian cardinal sent by Pope John Paul II last year to try to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq said Monday the president promised that the U.S. operation would be "quick."
Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course -- not rapid and not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."
Laghi was the Vatican's first envoy to Washington in the 1980s and established a friendship with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.
Copyright 2005 © Associated Press |
