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Clinton, Kerry demand Iraq contingency plan |
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By Kara Oppenheim
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Posted: 07/20/07 04:52 PM [ET] |
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced Friday that they will introduce legislation requiring the Pentagon to report to Congress on contingency planning for redeployment of troops to Iraq.
“From New Orleans to Baghdad, this administration has made ‘planning’ a dirty word and an alien concept, and the damage to the United States has been immeasurable,” Kerry said. “Now with American lives on the line in Iraq, the least we can do is force them to draw up contingency plans to redeploy American troops in Iraq.”
The proposed bill comes on the heels of heated debate between Clinton and the Department of Defense. In May, the senator from New York wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking for the Pentagon to brief congressional committees on contingency plans for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.
Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman this week responded on Gates’s behalf, dismissing Clinton’s request and arguing that “premature and public discussion” of exit strategies “reinforces enemy propaganda.”
In a letter yesterday to Gates, Clinton called Edelman’s response unsatisfactory and renewed her request that the administration brief Congress “instead of adhering to a political strategy to attack those who rightfully question their competence and preparedness after years of mistakes and misjudgments.”
The senators indicated that they expected their bill to have bipartisan support in Congress.
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