McCain: Bush not straight enough on Iraq

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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/19/iraq.senators/index.html

McCain: Bush not straight enough on Iraq

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Several Republicans and Democrats took President Bush to task on Sunday's talk shows over his repeated assertions that all is well in Iraq. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Bush was not being "as straight as maybe we'd like to see" with the American people about Iraq.


McCain, who has campaigned for Bush's re-election, acknowledged that the incumbent's rosy view of Iraq as "on the path of stability and democracy" may not be accurate, "although I've been with him when he has told audiences that this is a very tough struggle that we're in."

Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a fellow Republican, disagreed with Kyl that the United States was anywhere near victory."I don't think we're winning. In all due respect to my friend Jon Kyl, the term 'hand-wringing' is a little misplaced here," Hagel said.
"The fact is, a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies are required. We didn't do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost."The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq," said Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has traveled to Iraq twice and is a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he doesn't "buy that" when told enough troops are in Iraq to do the job.


On ABC's "This Week," Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware both had critical words for the administration's handling of Iraq. "No. 1, on the police training, we've wasted 17 months," Biden said. "We should be using some imagination. Pick out the 500 most likely leaders in the police force, put them on a 747, fly them to Bonn, Germany, or to Berlin, and tell them to train them and train them as leaders, so they're paramilitary police.