Reid painting GOP senators with Iraq brush

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I) (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

by Frank James

The standoff over the Iraq War between America's versions of the Iraqi Shi'a and Sunnis, that is, congressional Democrats on one side and the White House and Senate Republicans on the other, showed no signs of abating today.

Senate Democrats lined up against the plan for U.S. troops in Iraq which President Bush is expected to announce tomorrow evening, essentially the reduction of forces by next summer to pre-surge levels as outlined by Gen. David Petraeus on Capitol Hill this week.

This was Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who was joined at a press conference by fellow Democrats Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island:

"Despite these facts, the president has told us to be patient, allow the spilling of more American blood, more of our treasury. His plan is neither a drawdown nor a change in mission that we need. His plan is simply more of the same, to keep at least 130,000 troops, American troops, in the midst of an intractable civil war. This is unacceptable to me, it's unacceptable to the American people.

I hope the Senate Republicans also recognize its time for them to come over and work with us. It's long past time to change the mission in Iraq. It's time to reduce our large combat footprint and to fight in other areas to make this country safer. So I call on the Senate Republicans to not walk lock-step as they have with the president for years in this war. It's time to change. It's the president's war. At this stage, it appears clearly it's also the Republican senators' war. And I hope that they will drop that legacy next week.

It was Reid's signal that he plans to morph Senate Republicans into President Bush in voters' minds. Reid hopes this implied threat is enough to concentrate the minds of some vulnerable Republicans and get Democrats the additional votes they need to force a bigger drawdown in Iraq.

The Majority Leader said Senate Democrats will offer amendments next week to that end. Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee provided a bit more on the amendments:

SEN. LEVIN: Well, the president apparently is just going to stay the course, essentially, just announce that the surge will end by the middle of next year, go back to the place where we were before the surge. That is the status quo, which he is unwilling to change.

If he's going to change course, a number of things have got to happen. We've got to go significantly below the pre-surge level, to have a number of troops that are there only for the limited missions of protecting our diplomats, of training the Iraqi army, of going after al Qaeda in a limited counterterrorism way.

Those limited missions are what need to be transitioned to, and the amendments that will be offered will have that transition of mission and the transition to a lower number of troops to a number significantly below the pre-surge level.

Just simply saying, as the president is apparently going to say, that he wants to go to the pre-surge level by next July and then decide whether to go deeper is the definition of an open-ended commitment. That is the open-ended commitment that he refuses, apparently, to change. Instead of real change, to simply go to the pre-surge level is an effort to prevent a real change. It creates and provides an illusion of change in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of those of us who want to truly change course in Iraq.

Levin added that at the end of a long day of hearings yesterday, Petraeus said he envisioned reductions beyond the pre-surge level.

And then I said directly, "That implies to me that you're committed now to continue reductions beyond the pre-surge level, below the pre-surge level, and to continue those reductions when we reach that level." And his answer was very direct: yes.

And I repeated the question, because it is an important difference, I believe, between what General Petraeus is saying and what President Bush is apparently going to say tomorrow night. If President Bush simply says again that we're going to return to the pre-surge level of 130,000, 15 combat brigades, and then decide whether to go deeper, that the definition of the open-ended commitment.

But General Petraeus yesterday at least said something that I thought had a significant difference from that: a commitment now, which is what we are determined to put into law, to significantly reduce the number of American troops below the pre-surge level. And I don't know if that issue came up at the press conference between General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker this morning, but it is part of the record, and my press secretary has copies of the transcript of that question and answer between myself and General Petraeus where he made that important point.