WASHINGTON — President Bush has allowed too much infighting among his senior advisors, damaging his ability to present a clear picture of his plans for postwar Iraq, the top Republican and the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee both said Sunday.
"Mr. President, take charge. Take charge. Settle this dispute," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said he would advise Bush if asked. "He has got to take charge and tell the American people ... what is [the] plan and how much is it going to cost and who is going to pay for it."
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the Foreign Relations Committee's chairman, agreed that such advice "was very necessary."
"The president has to be the president," he said. "And that means president over the vice president and over the secretaries."
The comments, on NBC's "Meet the Press," referred to reports of long-running tensions between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who advised building international support for confronting and reconstituting Iraq, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has taken a tougher, unilateralist line.
Last week, the White House said the National Security Council would be taking greater responsibility for Iraqi reconstruction. Some observers saw that as a slap at Rumsfeld and the Defense Department, which has had the primary responsibility so far for rebuilding efforts.
The internal tensions could become an issue this week as the Senate takes up Bush's request for $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request has drawn complaints from some lawmakers that the administration should do more to win donations from other countries, and that it has not laid out a clear plan for the U.S. role in Iraq and a political transition to Iraqi rule.
"There is no clear articulation within this administration of what the goals, what the message is, what the plan is," Biden said. "You have this significant division within the administration between the Powells and the Rumsfelds."
Lugar said that Bush, Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice had all recently given speeches on Iraq and that "the tone in all of those was distinctly different." While Cheney's speech "was very, very tough and strident," Lugar said, Powell was "once again emphasizing international concerns, as opposed to our dominance" in managing postwar Iraq.
