Cheney and Bush cool war of words on Iraq

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney charged today that some Senate Democrats were "dishonest and reprehensible" for suggesting that President Bush lied to the nation about going to war in Iraq and said he strongly disagrees with a battle-tested congressman who advocates a pullout.

But Cheney said he has no quarrel with the right of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to propose a withdrawal of troops, calling him "a good man, a Marine, a patriot."

"Nor is there any problem with debating whether the United States and its allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place," Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. "Nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion."

Murtha, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, roiled the nation's capital last week when he proposed that all of the almost 160,000 U.S. forces in Iraq be withdrawn over six months. Murtha has been one of the biggest Pentagon boosters in Washington.

"What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence," Cheney said.

Earlier, President Bush struck a similar tone after meeting with Chinese leaders as his Asian trip moved toward a conclusion.

After more than a week of increasingly harsh rhetoric, Bush sought to tone down the raging debate on Iraq and offered an olive branch to Murtha, the pro-military Democratic lawmaker condemned by the White House for turning against the war last week.

Summoning reporters between meetings with Chinese leaders here, Bush said he welcomed the political battle over the war as a "worthy debate" and rejected attempts to question the patriotism of those who oppose it. He also said he did not want the bitter conflict to degenerate into a partisan showdown.

"People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq," the president said. "I heard somebody say, well, maybe so-and-so is not patriotic because they disagree with my position. I totally reject that thought. This is not an issue of who's [a] patriot and who's not patriotic. It's an issue of an honest, open debate about the way forward in Iraq."

Bush praised Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Vietnam War veteran and legislative hawk who last week concluded that the United States needs to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq.

"Congressman Murtha is a fine man, a good man, who served our country with honor and distinction as a Marine in Vietnam and as a United States congressman," Bush said. "He is a strong supporter of the United States military. And I know the decision to call for an immediate withdrawal of our troops by Congressman Murtha was done in a careful and thoughtful way. I disagree with his position."

Meanwhile, the debate continued on Sunday morning television, where Murtha described his views in detail and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared on four talk shows to rebut them.

In an interview with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press," Murtha was conciliatory in tone, but if anything even more emphatic about what he views as the futility of American military operations in Iraq.

"I hoped we'd open the door for him [Bush] to start a dialogue about how we change the course. ... I'm very hopeful that my proposal is something they'll take seriously, that he'll get a few of us to the White House and talk to us about this very difficult problem," Murtha said.

But he also said he was "absolutely convinced we're making no progress" in training the Iraqi troops so that Washington can allow them to take over. The Baghdad government and its fledgling army are "going to let us do the fighting as long as we're there," he said. "They'll have to work this out themselves. It's their country."

Murtha criticized members of the Bush administration as "overly optimistic, illusionary about their policy."

"This is not a war of words; this is a real war where people are getting killed. Fifteen thousand people have been wounded, and half of them are desperately wounded, blinded, without their arms," he said. "So this is a real war which we have to find a solution to. And since there's no progress, we've got to find a way to let the Iraqis take over."

The tenor of Bush's remarks contrasted sharply with the White House message since before the president left for Asia a week ago. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley and other senior officials have waged what a top aide called a "sustained" counterattack against Democrats who have criticized conduct of the war.

The Bush team accused congressional Democrats of hypocrisy for saying Bush skewed prewar intelligence, because the same Democrats also had thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion in March 2003. In questioning the justification for war, Bush and his lieutenants said, the Democrats were undermining troop morale and sending a message of weakness to the enemy.

Perhaps the most striking moment came after Murtha's proposal. The White House assailed Murtha, likening him to left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, characterizing him as a newfound ally of the "extreme liberal wing" of his party and accusing him of wanting to "surrender to terrorists."

The tone only grew angrier the next day on the House floor when freshman Republican Jean Schmidt of Ohio accused Murtha of being a "coward."

Bush appeared to be trying to bring the dialogue back to a more civil plane Sunday. "This is a debate worthy of our country," he said. "It's an important debate. It does not have to be a partisan issue."

Despite their conciliatory rhetoric, Bush and Rumsfeld continued to characterize Murtha's call for withdrawal as dangerous, misguided and unsupported by the majority of Americans.

Like Bush, Rumsfeld backed away from the criticisms of Murtha, specifically countering Schmidt's comment on the House floor that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

"He's not a coward. I'll tell you that," Rumsfeld said of Murtha on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Rumsfeld also said Murtha's public questioning of the overall U.S. war policy wasn't a bad thing, or unusual. "We had similar debates during World War II, during Korea, during Vietnam; it's always been so," Rumsfeld said. But "we also have to understand that our words have effects."

Rumsfeld contended that U.S. assistance has allowed Iraq to make great progress on military and political fronts in advance of the Dec. 15 elections there. He deflected repeated requests for specifics, declining to say how many Iraqi troops have officially met U.S. proficiency standards, the first step toward taking over the security effort.

Citing the upcoming Iraq elections, Rumsfeld said troop levels would remain near 160,000. Depending upon conditions, troops then would return to pre-election levels of 138,000 as planned, he said.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.