A key US Senate committee brushed aside US President George W. Bush's plea to give his new war strategy a chance and passed a resolution on Wednesday opposing the plan to send more troops to Iraq.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed 12-9 a resolution that dismissed Bush's plans to increase troops in Iraq as "not in the national interest." The vote on the nonbinding measure was largely along party lines, with Senator Chuck Hagel being the sole Republican on the committee offering his support, after accusing the Bush administration of playing "ping-pong" with US lives.
The measure now goes to the Senate floor for a vote expected next week. But the panel's chairman Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said it may be rewritten to attract more Republicans who have soured on the Iraq war.
Bush, a Republican, does not have to abide by the resolution.
Vice President Dick Cheney said a Senate vote would not sway the administration.
"It won't stop us," Cheney told CNN. "We are moving forward ... in terms of this effort, the president has made his decision."
The resolution was "not an attempt to embarrass the president," said Biden.
Rather, it was designed to alert Bush that senators believe sending more US troops into a civil war is "the wrong way to go," Biden said. "It's an attempt to save the president from making a significant mistake."
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Bush insisted it was not too late for a new Iraq strategy.
"I ask you to give it a chance to work," Bush said in the speech to the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and Senate.
Biden will seek consensus with the sponsor of another bipartisan resolution critical of the troop increase, Virginia Senator John Warner, a leading Republican voice on national security.
Warner's resolution takes a softer tone than the one passed by the Senate committee, omitting words such as "escalating" to describe the troop increase.
At the last minute before Wednesday's vote, the Foreign Relations Committee changed "escalating" to "increasing," with no discernible effect.
Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich said he was more skeptical than ever about Bush's plan but he voted against the resolution because he thought it could be characterized as a "political attack."
The committee's senior Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, said he was not confident Bush's plan would succeed, but also opposed the resolution.
"This vote will force nothing on the president, but it will confirm to our friends and allies that we are divided and in disarray," Lugar said.
Hagel, who is considered a presidential possibility, said senators must take a stand on the "most divisive issue in the country since Vietnam."
"Sure it's tough," he said. "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes."
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