Democrats and Republicans on Thursday slammed a new US plan for a surge troops into Iraq as a tragedy and the worst blunder since Vietnam as the Bush administration affirmed it had no idea how long the forces would stay.
Some of Bush's fellow Republicans joined newly empowered Democrats in voicing skepticism that dispatching 21,500 extra troops to help Iraq's beleaguered government regain control of Baghdad would work.
US peace activists held the first of what they said promised would be thousands of protests, vowing to take to the airwaves and the Internet in a campaign to block the plan, which they said had fueled a fresh surge of anti-war sentiment.
PHOTO: AFP
A day after his televised White House speech announcing the plan, Bush told army personnel and their families in Fort Benning, Georgia, that it was the "best chance of success" but would not have an immediate impact in quelling violence in Iraq.
"Yet over time we can expect to see positive results and that would be the Iraqis chasing down the murderers," he said.
Democrats who want a phased withdrawal from Iraq to start in four to six months quickly lambasted Bush's plan.
Democratic Senator Harry Reid said he expects to have the votes, with the support of some Republicans, to pass a resolution opposing the new deployment, which would bring US troop levels in Iraq to more than 150,000.
Though such a resolution is not binding and merely reflects opposition in the Senate, Reid said, "I think that [bipartisan passage] will be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq."
Democrats, who now control Congress, said that their return to power after November's elections could be seen as an anti-war referendum and a repudiation of Bush's new policies in a conflict that has killed more than 3,000 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
But leading Democrats stopped short of threatening to block funding for the new forces, mindful that would give Bush and his allies a chance to accuse them of abandoning the troops.
As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, the committee's chairman, called Bush's plan a "tragic mistake."
Signaling widening cracks within Bush's own Republican Party over his Iraq policy, not a single committee member spoke out in his support and a few offered pointed criticism.
"This speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam if it's carried out," said Senator Chuck Hagel, like Biden a potential White House contender in next year's election.
Republican Senator John Mc-Cain, who had lobbied hard for a troop increase, said it was the right decision, though failure could unleash chaos in the region.
Rice insisted that Bush's plan would put more pressure on Iraqis to take over their own security, something that was vital to any eventual US pullback.
But she warned that Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Iraqi government was on "borrowed time" to restore security.
Anti-war activists said 1,000 protests were scheduled for Thursday night in all 50 states ahead of a Jan. 27 march in Washington that they expect to draw hundreds of thousands.
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