Bush Asserts He’Ll Make the Decisions About Iraq

By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman

WASHINGTON — Declaring “I’m the decision maker,” President Bush Friday dismissed congressional efforts to formally condemn his Iraq plan, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that a proposed Senate resolution criticizing the deployment of additional troops “emboldens the enemy.”

“It’s pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena should- n’t have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. “. . . I’m sure that that’s not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect.”

While Bush met with military leaders in the Oval Office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and anti-war Rep. Jack Murtha turned up in Baghdad.

The timing of the trip, from the Bush administration’s point of view, couldn’t have been worse. It came just days after the president asked Congress in his State of the Union address to give his revised Iraq strategy a chance to work.

Bush consulted with Gates and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who will head American forces in Iraq, at an early morning meeting at the White House. Speaking with reporters afterwards, the president complained that lawmakers “are condemning a plan before it’s even had a chance to work. And they have an obligation and a serious responsibility, therefore, to put up their own plan as to what would work.”

Bush later met with House Republicans at a retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and, according to two Republicans present, mocked the Senate in telling the lawmakers that he found it “ironic” that senators would oppose his plan to dispatch 21,500 more troops to Iraq but praise and unanimously confirm the man who helped design it, Petraeus, as the chamber did Friday.

Bush also defended a Pentagon program to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq, saying that U.S. troops would use all necessary measures to protect themselves and Iraqi civilians from harm.

“It makes sense that if somebody’s trying to harm our troops, or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that we will stop them,” Bush said in response to a question about the program, the details of which were first reported in Friday’s Washington Post.

But Bush and Gates both said U.S. troops would not cross Iraq’s border with Iran under the program, and Bush said he is still committed to resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program diplomatically.

Democrats responded angrily to Gates’ comments on the Senate’s troop resolutions, which were similar to what Petraeus said at his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

“The American people will rightly dismiss these accusations as a desperate attempt by the administration to support a failed policy that is not worthy of the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., disputed Bush’s assertion that the Democrats have not come up with a plan. He said his party was united around the proposition that Americans should shift more responsibility to the Iraqis, begin a “phased redeployment” of troops and initiate more aggressive regional diplomacy to stabilize Iraq.

The Senate Foreign Relations committee on Wednesday approved a resolution opposing the introduction of the additional troops, calling for more diplomacy and a regional peace effort, and demanding that U.S. troops be deployed away from urban sectarian hotbeds to guard Iraq’s borders, hunt down terrorists and train Iraqi security forces.

GOP leaders, meanwhile, are coalescing around a resolution drafted by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would establish strict benchmarks for the Iraqi government and the Bush administration to meet, without criticizing the president’s plan.

At the private retreat for House Republicans, Bush did not rule out support for that sort of proposal.

Top House Republicans are trying to balance a show of support for Bush with broad skepticism among GOP lawmakers that his troop increase will work.

Meanwhile, Pelosi, D-Calif., and Murtha, D-Pa., both vocal war critics, met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the Green Zone a day after a rocket attack on the heavily fortified complex wounded six people.

“We come out of the meeting with a greater understanding of the others’ point of view,” Pelosi said, adding that the delegation also made the visit “to convey to our troops the appreciation of the American people for what they’re doing, to applaud their patriotism.”

“American forces should quickly begin to transition from a combat role to one focused on training, counterterrorism, force protection, and controlling Iraq’s borders,” the delegation said in a written statement, espousing a policy embraced by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group but not the administration.

It was another violent day in Iraq. A bomb hidden in a box of pigeons exploded Friday as Baghdad shoppers gathered around, tearing through a busy pet and livestock market and littering the blood- soaked pavement with human remains and animal carcasses.

At least 62 people were killed or found dead nationwide, including a U.S. Marine.

As of Friday, at least 3,071 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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