Infighting hurts Iraq policy, senators say

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has lost control of Iraq policy because of infighting among administration officials, the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Sunday.

The administration also came under criticism from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for being unwilling to create a real international coalition and alienating governments everywhere. "This is haphazard, shotgun, shoot-from-the-hip diplomacy," the Massachusetts senator said.

The committee leaders urged Bush to take charge of U.S. postwar policy in Iraq.

"The president has to be the president, over the vice president and over these secretaries," the chairman, Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Added the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware: "There's no clear articulation within this administration of what the goals, what the message is, what the plan is. You have this significant division within the administration between the Powells and the Rumsfelds."

Since early in the administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell has counseled a generally more moderate line than Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Even before the Iraq war in the spring, tales of tension and turf battles between their departments were widespread.

Asked what he would tell Bush were the two to meet alone in the White House, Biden said: "I would say, 'Mr. President, take charge. Take charge. Settle this dispute."'

Biden said Bush should tell Powell, Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney: "This is my policy. Any one of you that divert from the policy is off the team."

Lugar also predicted American forces might have to be in Iraq in some capacity for eight years or more. Both he and Biden said the country's recovery would cost at least $50 billion more than the $87 billion, including more than $20 billion for the recovery, that Bush has requested and is pending in Congress.

Both Biden and Lugar mentioned Cheney's speech last week, presented as a part of an "information offensive" by the administration to counter what it sees as unnecessarily negative media reports about the Iraq postwar situation.

Lugar called it "very, very tough and strident." Biden said Cheney's desire, shared by Rumsfeld, is "to undermine international institutions because they feel it's a drag on our capability." This makes Biden's position as a Democrat who voted for Bush's war plan frustrating, "the most frustrating time in my career."

Kerry, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said Bush and Cheney should apologize to Americans "for having misled America, for not having kept his promises of working adequately within the international community, not having built a legitimate international coalition, not having exhausted the process of the inspections.

"And, most importantly, not having gone to war as a matter of last resort, which is what he promised to America."

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