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Iraq Report Boils Down to Competing Time Demands
U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, in a videoconference with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, discusses the situation in Baghdad.
(By Mark Wilson -- Getty Images)
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Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said her staff found the invitation in a stack of faxes that came in over the public fax machine, which receives hundreds of messages a day. Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said he never received an invitation.
White House officials expressed irritation at what they described as petty congressional griping and pointed at the Pentagon, which they said had chosen to fax the invitations to lawmakers. The White House spent at least part of the day tracking down the faxes and confirming that they had been sent to those who complained and those who received the message but didn't show up.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) declined to discuss the specifics of the briefing but said of Bush's strategy, "I don't have any increasing confidence as a result of anything I've heard recently." Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a senior member of the committee, said that he had learned there is "some progress being made" but that stability on the ground in Iraq varies greatly by region.
Further strains emerged in an exchange of letters between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y) and Eric S. Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Clinton wrote Edelman in May to ask whether contingency plans were being made for a phased withdrawal.
In a July 16 response released yesterday by Clinton's office, Edelman chastised Clinton's question. "Premature and public discussion" about withdrawal, he said, "reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia." Such talk, he added, "understandably unnerves" U.S. allies in Iraq and "exacerbates sectarian trends."
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines called Edelman's response "outrageous and dangerous" and said it exhibited "the same combination of arrogance and incompetence" in planning redeployment that the Pentagon had displayed going into Iraq.
Washingtonpost.com staff writer Paul Kane and staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
