Washington civilities fail to end discord over Iraq
By Stephen Collinson
WASHINGTON: Prickly disagreements over Iraq have already deflated post-election promises of bipartisanship in Washington, as President George W. Bush met leaders of the next Democrat-controlled Senate.
A day after lunching with top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi, Bush met her Senate counterpart Harry Reid and senior Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who will control the upper chamber when the new Congress convenes in January.
Democrats flexed their new muscle after the political earthquake triggered by Tuesday's elections, when they took control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time since 1994.
“There is a great opportunity for us to show the country that Republicans and Democrats are equally as patriotic and equally as concerned about the future and we can work together,” Bush said as he met the senators.
Bush, who makes his home in Texas, also had warm words for Reid, also from a western state, Nevada.
“We tend to speak the same language, pretty plain-spoken people, so (that) should bode well for our relationship,” he said, publicly turning the page after a bruising midterm election campaign.
Reid said the discussion had been excellent. “We've talked about issues that are important to our country. (The) election's over,” he said.
Both sides have put on a show of cooperation to appease voters angry at the bitter divisions in US politics, but wrangles, notably over Iraq, were already breaking out.
Senior Democratic Congressman John Murtha warned that Bush's firing of Donald Rumsfeld would not end the war.
“You fired the secretary of defence. But that's not a change in policy,” Murtha said on CNN.
“What we have to do is give a deadline to the Iraqis,” Murtha said, adding that he favoured opening an investigation into how Bush's White House entered and managed the war in Iraq.
Roy Blunt, House majority whip for the Republicans, accused the Democrats of wanting to simply pull out of Iraq.
“We clearly have to be sure we take the war on terrorism and the war on Islamic totalitarianism seriously. You can't naively assume that this is going to end if we just decide to stop fighting,” Blunt said on Fox News.
Republicans and Democrats looked with hope toward a bipartisan probe co-led by former Republican secretary of state James Baker into new approaches to the occupation of Iraq, in which 2,800 US troops and tens of thousands of civilians have died.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would meet members of the group at the White House on Monday, and said senior officials, including Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, would also be briefed.
On Thursday, Snow said Bush would not necessarily adopt the group's recommendations.
“To the extent that the Iraq Study Group has fresh ideas and analysis that we think is going to be interesting and helpful, we're going to be grateful for it,” Snow said.
“But the idea that somebody says, 'Ah-ha, here's the document, let us follow' -- no, it doesn't work that way”. In another political brushfire, the White House resubmitted the nomination of hawkish UN ambassador John Bolton to the Senate, sparking an immediate row with Democrats.—AFP
