Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee came to the defense of US President Bush on Friday, lending support to his decision to send more troops to Iraq and hoping to head off a Senate resolution criticizing the plan.
In contrast to the bipartisan barrage of criticism a day earlier by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republicans on the armed services panel, with few exceptions, portrayed the troop increase as a risky but necessary move to regain control of Baghdad, and they portrayed Democrats as lacking the will to see the war through to victory.
"To my colleagues, I would ask, at least in the short term here, that we measure our words, that we not have a political stampede to declare the war lost when it's not yet lost, or to embrace strategies that would lead to defeat," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
But the public show of support for the White House plan masked deep concern among some Republicans, and outright opposition from others, to sending additional troops. Senate Democrats are preparing a nonbinding resolution opposing the plan that Democrat Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said might attract enough Republican votes to overcome parliamentary hurdles and pass if Democrats bring it to a vote.
To reassure senators worried about an indefinite commitment of more US troops, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the panel that, while there is no explicit time limit on how long they will stay, he viewed the deployment as likely to last "months, not years."
He added that withdrawals were possible this year if the additional troops being sent to Baghdad reduced the violence significantly.
Testifying on Capitol Hill about the plan for the second straight day, Gates said Iraqi lawmakers might decide to replace Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, if he failed to take steps to prosecute the new plan to regain control of Baghdad.
"The first consequence that he has to face is the possibility that he'll lose his job," Gates said. "There are beginning to be some people around that may say, `I can do better than he's doing,' in terms of making progress."
Administration officials have discussed among themselves whether they might need to withdraw support for al-Maliki if he doesn't perform, notably by building a new coalition in the Iraqi parliament. Gates' statement was the first mention of the subject in public by a senior administration official.
Gates and other administration officials have had trouble explaining to lawmakers why they are confident that al-Maliki will carry out promises to send more Iraqi troops to Baghdad and to permit them and the additional US forces to operate in Shiite neighborhoods, where they have been blocked from conducting operations in the past.
Gates conceded that the Iraqi government's record of fulfilling its commitments was "not an encouraging one," but said al-Maliki now seemed to him "eager" to follow the plan worked out with US commanders.
He acknowledged that al-Maliki initially had wanted to carry out the intensified military effort in Baghdad without more US troops. In addition, US military commanders feared that without US forces monitoring Iraqi operations there could be even worse sectarian bloodshed.
"There's no question in my mind that Prime Minister Maliki wanted to do this operation on his own," Gates said, but he was "persuaded that additional American forces were needed in order to make his plan succeed."
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine seemed to sum up the skepticism about al-Maliki among lawmakers in both parties when she noted that he "did not seem to welcome" the idea of sending more US forces when she met with him in Iraq just weeks ago.
"I'm really skeptical that the [Iraqi] prime minister has really bought into this plan," she said.
On Friday, Bush invited top Republican leaders of Congress to Camp David for a weekend session. The retreat took on new meaning as the White House sought to prevent further Republican defections over Iraq strategy.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, and Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, and their deputies were scheduled to spend the evening at Camp David on Friday with the president.
Asked by CBS News on Friday whether he believed he had the authority to send additional troops to Iraq no matter what Congress wants, Bush replied that "in this situation I do."
The president's Iraq strategy remained a deeply divisive subject during a private Senate Republican Conference on Friday.
At the session, Senator John McCain of Arizona urged senators to read the president's plan and study intelligence reports before making up their minds. McCain has been arguing for months for a troop increase. He is meeting privately with undecided senators in hopes of slowing Republican fallout.
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