McCain, Feingold Air Views in Iraq
Visiting Legislators Debate U.S. Policy as Violence Rages

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 26, 2006

BAGHDAD, March 25 -- The increasingly rancorous public debate in the United States over the war spilled into Iraq during a news conference Saturday with two visiting lawmakers who are outspoken in their opposing stands on the issue.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime supporter of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who voted against the invasion and has spoken out against the war ever since, said they had come not to air their divergent views but to urge Iraqi politicians to speed up the process of forming a government. But during questions from reporters, they argued -- cordially and pointedly -- over such issues as the timing of any withdrawal of U.S. troops and whether their continued presence is doing more harm than good.

Feingold said he believed "a large troop presence has a tendency to fuel the insurgency because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that the U.S. is here to occupy the country."

"I think that it's very possible that the sectarian differences are inflamed by the fact that U.S. troops are here," he continued, adding that their long-term presence "may well be destabilizing, not stabilizing."

Asked a question on a different topic, McCain quickly responded: "I believe that premature troop withdrawal is not in consonance with what's going on the ground."

With Iraq bogged down in sectarian violence in recent months while political leaders struggle to form a new government, debate over the American presence has intensified in the United States. Several visiting politicians, including McCain, have warned that the American public was turning against the war and urged Iraqi leaders to move more quickly in building a coalition government.

U.S. politicians traditionally avoid public disagreements when traveling abroad, particularly in war zones where U.S. troops are engaged. McCain said the argument was better suited for the Senate floor, and Feingold said he would "go into more details when I'm home." The two senators, considered potential presidential candidates in 2008, were among a seven-member delegation of legislators and governors -- five Republicans and two Democrats -- who met Saturday with such Iraqi leaders as President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, and with U.S. military commanders.

Their visit came as more violence was reported across Iraq, including a terrifying incident earlier in the week in the western city of Ramadi. On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital.

One teacher, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared retaliation from insurgents, said that most students ran from the classroom but that some stayed to watch. Many stopped coming to school after the incident, he said. Another teacher, who said he moved his mathematics class to his home to accommodate frightened students, said Mihallawi had earlier been threatened because he worked as a translator for U.S. forces in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Mihallawi "looked at us just like he was telling us that we do not have to be scared. Even as we were running out of the door, his looks were still telling us that nothing will happen and we do not have to be scared," said a student, whose father asked that his name not be used. "I heard him screaming for a few seconds, then stop screaming."

The father said his son has had trouble sleeping since the incident. "He always has nightmares and he always wakes up screaming and shaking, talking in his dreams," he said.

The mujaheddin shura, a recently formed council of insurgent groups believed to be led by al-Qaeda in Iraq, said in a statement distributed in several Ramadi mosques that Mihallawi had provided information about insurgents to U.S. forces. "Because of that, the religious committee at the al-Qaeda court sentenced him to death to apply God's punishment," the statement continued.

A physician at Ramadi's hospital said he kept Mihallawi's body in a morgue refrigerator until his family could recover it discreetly. The Post is withholding the physician's name for security reasons.

A spokesman for the U.S. Marines in Anbar province, of which Ramadi is the capital, said he had no information on the attack. A spokesman for al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, acknowledged that the group had killed Mihallawi but denied he was beheaded and said he was killed outside the school. He asked reporters not to publicize the incident, calling it "an internal affair."

In Baghdad on Saturday, a mortar shell struck a home in the restive neighborhood of Dora, killing two people and wounding six, according to police Capt. Raad al-Timmimi.

Elsewhere in Iraq, police officers south of Baghdad found the bodies of at least 10 people shot to death with their hands bound. East of Baghdad, four people were killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb tore through their vehicle. And in the town of Mahmudiyah, police said Sunni insurgents fought for several hours with members of a Shiite militia loyal to influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, leading to the detention of several insurgents.

With sectarian violence surging across the country since the bombing last month of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, each member of the U.S. delegation visiting Baghdad stressed the urgency of forming a new government. McCain pointed to a dearth of economic development but said he had been encouraged by reports of improvements in Iraq's security forces and a burgeoning rift between Iraqi and foreign insurgents. "The statistics that I see is that slow and steady progress is being made," the Arizona senator said.

Feingold, who recently called for the Senate to censure President Bush over a domestic surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, said he was dismayed not to hear any of the military commanders he met with mention al-Qaeda as a source of the problems in Iraq. The Bush administration and U.S. officials here often point to the radical group as a major source of instability in the country.

"There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here," Feingold said. McCain responded that he did "not want to get into a back-and-forth with one of my best friends."

"Russ could have been a lot more outspoken," said Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who was part of the visiting delegation. "There's always been with foreign policy an idea that debate stops at the shores. . . . At times today it didn't."

Special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Omar Fekeiki and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.