<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/middleeast/07capital.html> October 7, 2006 Warner's Iraq Remarks Surprise White House By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was "drifting sideways," responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment.
"I don't believe that the president thinks that way," Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said when asked whether the president agreed with the senator, John Warner of Virginia. "I think that he believes that while it is tough going in Iraq, that slow progress is being made."
Ms. Perino's carefully worded response underscores the delicate situation that Mr. Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has created for the White House just one month before an election in which Mr. Bush has been trying to shift the national debate from the war in Iraq to the broader war on terror.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday after returning from a trip that included a one-day stop in Baghdad, Mr. Warner said the United States should consider "a change of course" if the violence there did not diminish soon. He did not specify what shift might be necessary, but said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken "off the table."
With the blessing of the White House, a high-level commission led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, is already reviewing American policy in Iraq. But the commission is not scheduled to report to Mr. Bush and Congress until after the November elections, a timeline that the White House had hoped would enable Mr. Bush to avoid public discussion of any change of course until after voters determine which party will control Congress next year.
Now, Mr. Warner's comments are pushing up that timeline, forcing Republicans to confront the issue before some are ready. In an interview on Friday, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who has been critical of the administration's approach in the past, said there was a "growing sense of unease" among other Republicans, which she said could deepen because of Senator Warner's comments.
Ms. Collins, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, echoed Mr. Warner's calls for a shift in strategy in Iraq. "When Chairman Warner, who has been a steadfast ally of this administration, calls for a new strategy," she said, "that is clearly significant."
She said the current approach, which she attributed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, had not led to an overall reduction in violence or any prospect that American troop levels would come down soon.
"We've heard over and over that as Iraqis stand up, our troops will stand down," Ms. Collins said. "Well, there are now hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops and security forces, and yet we have not seen any reduction in violence."
Democrats, who have been using their fall election campaigns to tap into intense voter dissatisfaction with the way that Mr. Bush has handled Iraq, quickly seized on the Warner remarks, circulating them in e-mail messages to reporters. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, convened a conference call on Friday afternoon to hammer home the theme that even Republicans believed that the administration must change course. "Warner's statement is an important, important statement and, I hope, a turning point," Mr. Biden told reporters.
He that at least two Republican colleagues other than Mr. Warner had told him that once the election was over, they would join with Democrats in working on a bipartisan plan for bringing stability to Iraq. Echoing Mr. Warner's language, he said, "I wouldn't take any option off the table at this time. We are at the point of no return."
The White House said Friday that Mr. Bush had not spoken to Mr. Warner about his comments, and otherwise insisted that it had not glossed over the problems in Iraq. During her afternoon briefing, Ms. Perino harked back to a speech in late August in which, she said, the president said Iraq was at a "crucial moment." She said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had put forth the same message during her unannounced visit to Baghdad this week.
Later in the day, the White House circulated an e-mail message titled "Iraq Update: Political Progress," citing comments of other lawmakers, including Democrats, who had returned from the Middle East with more hopeful assessments than the one offered by Mr. Warner.
David S. Cloud contributed reporting.
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