Lawmakers Seek Bipartisanship on Iraq

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (Susan Walsh - AP)

WASHINGTON -- After a month at home with constituents, nearly a dozen members of the House issued a call Tuesday for bipartisan cooperation in Congress to stabilize Iraq and "bring our troops home" after more than four years of war.

The letter, signed by six Republicans and five Democrats, many of them political moderates, contained no specific timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces and took no position on earlier calls to limit future funds for the war.

Instead, it urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, to "work together to put an end to the political infighting" that has marked congressional debate on the conflict thus far.

The letter surfaced as Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, R-Ky., told reporters most Republicans will wait to hear from Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, before taking a position on the war.

Petraeus is scheduled to issue a report and testify before Congress in the next week, events that have long loomed as a pivotal point in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,700 U.S. troops and cost more than $400 billion.

Fearful of political repercussions, Republican lawmakers recently have become increasingly impatient with the president's stewardship of the war. And McConnell _ long a supporter of the president _ appeared to acknowledge that some sort of a change in course is likely.

"I would like to see us with at least some level of bipartisan agreement that we need a long-term deployment somewhere in the Middle East, in the future, for two reasons: Al-Qaida and Iran," McConnell told reporters.

"And I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn't end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we've had here in the homeland or on American facilities."

The letter to Pelosi and Boehner, issued as Congress returned to the Capitol after a summer break, underscored growing Republican impatience with the war. It also marked a willingness by some Democrats to seek a compromise rather than continue a pattern of party-line votes that characterized the first several months of the year.

"There just seems to be so much infighting in a political sense in Congress, which to me is highly ineffective," Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., said in an interview.

He and Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn., were the lead authors of the letter. The two men supported legislation that cleared a House committee almost unanimously last month calling for a report to Congress on a troop withdrawal. That bill was shelved without coming to a vote in the full House after Democratic liberals protested to their leadership that it was too weak to merit support.

Democrats in both houses have pursued a strategy since last winter of forcing Republicans to vote repeatedly on steps to hasten the end of U.S. participation in the war, including timelines for a troop withdrawal. Their hope was that public opposition to the war would eventually force GOP lawmakers to part company with the president.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., appeared to signal at least a temporary change in strategy last week. "I am willing and ready to help my Republican colleagues keep their word by working in a bipartisan way to change course in Iraq," he said in a statement.

Bush vetoed one bill earlier this year that would have set a binding timeline for a troop withdrawal, and has aggressively protected his prerogatives as commander in chief. He raised the possibility of a reduction in the 160,000-strong U.S. force during his unannounced visit Monday to al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province, where Sunni Arab sheiks have been turning against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Bush said that if Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker "tell me if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces."

The lawmakers who signed the letter include Democratic Reps. Tim Mahoney of Florida, Allen Boyd of Florida, Robert Brady of Pennsylvania and Dennis Cardoza of California as well as Tanner; and Republicans Phil English, Charles Dent and Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, Thomas Petri of Wisconsin and Scott Garrett of New Jersey as well as Castle.