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Simmons Calls For 'Outline' To Bring Troops Back From Iraq

Congressman Cites Iraqis' Takeover Of Armed Forces

By Ted Mann / The Day

U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, says he doesn't believe he's changed his tune, or moderated his position on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

But Simmons, like his downstate colleague, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, also is becoming increasingly vocal about the need to commit to a schedule for removing the roughly 130,000 soldiers from the country.

Simmons announced this week, after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assumed partial control over the country's fledgling armed forces, that the occupation of Iraq had reached “a critical milestone on the country's road toward democracy.”

The congressman has made similar statements at other events declared to be watershed moments, such as Iraq's parliamentary elections in December.

But with voter discontent about the war still high, and with what Democrats are hoping is an anti-incumbent breeze in the air, Simmons and Shays, among others, are seeking a more concrete response to constituents who want to know when their loved ones will be coming home.

“With this important benchmark met, now is the time for President Bush to put forth a realistic outline for getting our troops home safely, successfully and soon,” Simmons said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “Now we need to see additional operational details of how this event will contribute to the planned drawdown of U.S. forces.”

In its call for more specific information about how milestones announced by the administration will be translated into a reduction in the number of troops in combat, Simmons' statement echoes Shays' abrupt shift in his position on withdrawal.

Shays returned in August from his 14th congressional delegation trip to Iraq and announced that it was time to begin sketching a timeline for removing U.S. soldiers from the country, saying he had seen new evidence that the country was in the grip of sectarian violence, and that only a firm commitment to remove American forces would convince the Iraqi government to step up to its own responsibilities.

Shays, chairman of a House subcommittee on national security and international relations, will convene the first of three scheduled hearings to help determine a withdrawal timeline on Monday in Washington.

“I think you clearly see a shift” in the public comments by vulnerable Republican incumbents on war and proposed troop withdrawals, said Christopher Barnes, director of development at the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy and an expert on voting trends in Connecticut.

Shays and Simmons had both aggressively resisted calls from some Democrats to set a deadline for troop withdrawals, saying that doing so would embolden terrorists to attack American troops. And Shays had endorsed Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic incumbent who lost a primary battle to challenger Ned Lamont in large part because of Lieberman's support for the administration's war policies and for his stark criticism of the administration's Democratic opponents.

Simmons' statement was less explicit than Shays' in calling for a committed timeline to withdraw troops, Barnes said, but “other than that, these are cut from the same mold.”

“I think it's also no coincidence that it comes shortly after the Bush visit,” Barnes said, referring to a Simmons fund-raiser with the current president's father, George H.W. Bush. “So he can balance the need to raise money and need to show the Republican base that they're still with him, but he's still keeping close to the center.”

The congressman's Democratic challenger sharply condemned Simmons' comments, noting that Maliki had actually assumed control of only one of the Iraqi armed forces' 10 infantry divisions, as well as its navy and air force.

“To me it's outrageous,” Courtney said. “This guy has had three-and-a-half years to demand accountability from Bush and (Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld, and now that he's 60 days from an election and has seen two bad polls, now he wants to issue a statement.

“This was not a milestone. This is just a guy who's desperate to hold onto his office and has not done his job the last several years.”

Courtney has said he favors “redeployment” of American troops in the region, but has also opposed the precipitous, immediate withdrawal that candidates from Lieberman to Lamont have said would turn Iraq into a failed state and cede it entirely to sectarian militias and to terrorists.

The talk of “milestones” from the Pentagon and from incumbents like Simmons amounts to “happy-talk,” Courtney said.

“The answer to getting security in Iraq is you have to find a power-sharing arrangement that works for the ethno-sectarian groups that are out there killing each other,” he said. “But that undermines their whole election paradigm, which is that this is all about 9/11. ... It angers me that they still continue to refuse to face the historical context of what they've plunged into and recognize the mess that they've created.”

Simmons, in a telephone interview Friday, downplayed questions about his position on withdrawal, saying he had been calling all along for the drawing down of troop levels as “benchmarks” –– such as transfer of authority to Maliki and his government –– are achieved in Baghdad.

“It's not as if what I'm saying today is any different than what I was saying in January,” the congressman said.

But Simmons also said the power transfer enabled politicians like himself to ask for a more concrete schedule about troop returns.

“I think it's important for us to mark them,” he said of benchmarks, “but also to use them as a means of continuing to ask the administration, the Pentagon, the White House, what is the impact of this on our soldiers, on their deployment? That's the question the families ask of me. What is the impact of that on our own troops? I think that's a very reasonable question. A week or so ago that wouldn't have been appropriate to ask.”

Courtney said he wasn't holding his breath for a response from the president.

“If George Bush himself comes to the 2nd District or even responds with a real answer to that, then theoretically I can see there being an effect on this race,” he said. “But we'll all be old and gray before that happens.”