January 25, 2007	Thursday	Muharram 05, 1428

WASHINGTON, Jan 24: US President George Bush on Wednesday received a stinging rebuke of his Iraq policy, as a Senate panel approved a measure condemning his plan to pour more US troops into the country.

By a 12 to nine vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee condemned Mr Bush's plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, just one day after he pleaded with Americans to give his plan a chance to work. The measure now moves to the Senate floor for debate, possibly as early as next week.

But US Vice President Dick Cheney bluntly dismissed the congressional objections to increasing troop levels in Iraq, telling CNN television: “It won't stop us.”

The bipartisan resolution, written by the panel's chairman, Joseph Biden, and fellow Democrat Carl Levin, along with Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel, criticised an escalation of US forces in Iraq as `not in the national interest’. “My intention was to send the first of many messages -- direct and unequivocal -- to the president: Stop what you are doing,” Mr Biden said during the hearing.

The Democratic chairman added that he was likely to submit even tougher, binding Iraq legislation if Mr Bush fails to heed the message of the proposed symbolic measure.

Several lawmakers at the hearing, including Senator Robert Menendez, said the symbolic censure bill `is the least that can be done’ to reflect Americans' broad displeasure with America's deeply unpopular Iraq policy. The committee hearing was held after Bush delivered his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, in which he made his case for additional US troops in Iraq.

Unswayed, however, opposition Democrats after the speech accused the president of “recklessly” leading America into war and called for a withdrawal of US forces, in a blunt rebuttal to the president's address, and they continued to heap disdain on the president's Iraq strategy during yesterday 's hearing.

“The war in Iraq is fuelling terrorism,” said Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer. “It's draining our treasury ... It is weakening us in our own nation.” The draft bill calls on the United States to “transfer, under an appropriately expedited timeline, responsibility for internal security and halting sectarian violence in Iraq to the government of Iraq.” But it is only one of several proposals slamming Bush's surge plan, including some that would cap the number of troops, cut off funding for the deployment of additional troops or gradually pull US forces from Iraq altogether.

One of the bills deemed to be most acceptable to Republicans -- proposed by leading Republican lawmaker John Warner, former head of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- opposes an escalation in troops and urges the president to reconsider his options.Biden said during the hearing that he would be willing to work with Warner to craft acceptable language for a revised measure before it goes to the full Senate for approval.

Republicans also expressed strong dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Iraq, but said they opposed the resolution which they said would make matters even worse than they already are for US troops there.

“To the extent that a vote on this resolution would not only express, but quantify, the disunity within our government, it is not useful,” said Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the committee's former chairman.—AFP