Rep. Smith back from Iraq "most troops now say they want to come home"

Rep. Smith says vote in favor of war a mistake

By MATTHEW DALY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON — Just back from Iraq, Rep. Adam Smith says he is encouraged by the progress U.S. troops are making there. But Smith, one of two House Democrats from Washington state to vote in favor of the war, said Friday if he had to do it over, he would change his vote.

"I wanted to give our commander in chief a certain amount of trust," Smith said of his October 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq.

"I decided we are at war, Saddam needs to be held accountable and I will trust the president," Smith told The Associated Press. "I feel like that trust turned out to be misplaced. If I had to do it all over again, I would not give it to him for that reason."

Smith’s comments came a week after Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., who also voted in favor of the war, said he now believes the war was a mistake.

A longtime defense hawk, Dicks said last week he believes the prewar intelligence was "doctored" and that the White House did not prepare for or deploy enough troops for the insurgency that’s unfolded. He said he would "absolutely not" have voted for the war if he knew there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, as the administration claimed.

Smith, who returned Thursday from a five-day trip to Iraq and three other countries, said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials should be held accountable for overstating the case for war and the presence of catastrophic weapons.

But he stopped short of saying that anyone in the administration lied. "They showed a reckless disregard for the truth as they made the case," Smith said in a telephone interview from his home in Tacoma.

Even so, Smith said he disagrees with critics who call the war effort a failure.

"In the last year, there’s been significant progress on ... security, nation-building and transitioning to Iraqi control. It’s a shame that we weren’t prepared for it in the first place, but (U.S. troops) are making up for it and doing their best," he said.

A member of the House Armed Services and International Relations committees, Smith was in Iraq Monday and Tuesday, along with five other House members from both parties. The delegation also spent time in Kuwait, Germany and the Netherlands.

Smith met several times with small groups of soldiers from Washington state and elsewhere during his time in Iraq.

While morale is good, most troops now say they want to come home, Smith said - a sharp contrast to his last Iraq visit in June 2004.

"They believe in what they are doing and what they have done, and believe they have made a difference, in terms of security and a civil society," Smith said. "But the second part of that is they are ready to go home."

Like Dicks, Smith said he doesn’t agree with Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has called for troops to leave Iraq in six months.

But Smith said he supports a plan by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who said Monday that "measurable progress" must be made in the next six months on political, reconstruction and security fronts. Biden called for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, so that by the end of 2006 there are less than half the 160,000 troops now in Iraq.

"Our goal should be an autonomous Iraqi government that is sustainable and legitimate," starting with the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, Smith said. "Part of that is us getting out of there so they are not perceived as a puppet regime."

Just as important as U.S. actions is how they are framed by the administration and Congress, Smith said, adding that one of his biggest concerns about Murtha’s highly publicized call for withdrawal is that it comes from a sense that Iraq has descended into chaos "and we need to get the hell out of there."

"I don’t think that’s true, first of all," Smith said. "And second, it’s a major foreign policy mistake if we portray it that way."

Under those terms, al-Qaida and other insurgents can say they’ve won - that they drove the United States out of Iraq, which would only encourage terrorism around the world, Smith said.

Instead, the United States should portray its actions in a positive light, Smith said: "We want to withdraw. We took Saddam out and put in place a better government, and we are leaving because we are not occupiers. That’s a better message."
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