WASHINGTON — As President Bush prepared to hit the road this week to bolster public support for his policies in Iraq, a senior Republican senator said Sunday that the United States needed to craft an exit strategy because its continued presence had created a potential Vietnam.
"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on ABC's "This Week." "I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."
Hagel, the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a prospective presidential candidate in 2008, was among several senators from both parties who used the Sunday talk shows to express mounting frustration over the administration's handling of the war and the occupation.
A decorated Vietnam veteran, Hagel has been critical of the Iraq war for some time. But his remarks Sunday, along with those of other lawmakers, appeared to mark a significant escalation in the scope and breadth of the criticism of Bush and his administration's handling of the Iraq effort, some analysts said.
"It seems that the ice is cracking in a bipartisan way in terms of congressional dissatisfaction with President Bush's policy in Iraq. The silence in terms of directly criticizing the administration's handling of Iraq -- its mismanagement -- has come to an end," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council. Although his independent centrist organization is affiliated with the Democratic Party, Wittmann formerly served as a senior aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
He noted that some of those on Sunday's shows, such as Sens. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Carl Levin of Michigan, were Democrats who had frequently criticized the administration over Iraq, whereas others were staunch Republicans.
"The change now is that Republicans for the first time will assume oversight of the administration's policy," Wittmann said. "There is no more patience for happy talk from the administration."
In recent weeks, polls have shown a rising skepticism over Bush's handling of the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 1,860 U.S. troops and injured thousands more. In their comments Sunday, several lawmakers made note of the public's apparent unease, even as they differed over how long the U.S. should stay in Iraq and whether it should announce a tentative withdrawal date soon, as Feingold urged last week and reiterated Sunday.
