Rep. Sen. Lugar: Bush didn't understand Irzqi politics

Isn't this what so many of us have been saying for months?
-----BumbleBeeBoogie

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Top GOPer rips
Dubya on Iraq war
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Monday, August 11th, 2003

WASHINGTON - The White House failed to grasp the complexity of rebuilding Iraq before going to war and ignored concerns that the U.S. was leaping before it looked, a top Republican lawmaker said yesterday.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) faulted the administration for "a thorough misunderstanding" of the politics of Iraq.

"The basic assumptions ... simply were inadequate to begin with," Lugar told NBC's "Meet the Press."

"This is a war that still has to be won." Lugar wants President Bush to budget a five-year plan and to turn to the UN.

"I think we need to seek a resolution or more resolutions from the United Nations to give more legitimacy, more reason why other nations will come to the floor - specifically India, perhaps Germany," Lugar said.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is also still a major problem, said former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.). "If they've left the country, then certainly God knows we better figure out where they are," he said.

Also yesterday, Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman, in his most strident criticism of Bush over the Iraq war, said the President and his aides "overstated" the case for invading Iraq. "The Bush administration has too often followed a pattern of deception," the Connecticut senator told "Fox News Sunday."

Lugar noted that his panel tried to engage the White House on its postwar plans before the war began in March but was stood up by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who led the initial rebuilding effort.

In Iraq, meanwhile, hundreds rioted for a second day in the southern city of Basra to protest severe power and fuel shortages. Two Iraqis and a security guard working for the U.S. were killed.

Elsewhere, attacks on U.S. forces in Baghdad and ex-dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit wounded six soldiers, the military said. Two other soldiers died of noncombat-related causes, including one G.I. felled by heat stroke. Temperatures hit a high of 118 degrees in Baghdad yesterday.