Clinton calls time on US occupation of Iraq

The dam has burst. Former President Bill Clinton's verdict that the war in Iraq was "a big mistake" is echoing around the world.

The unease, the misgivings and downright opposition can be contained no longer.

From Senate Republicans to one of the most influential Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday the message has been the same.

The Iraq war has been a disaster, and the sooner American troops leave the better.

The alarm was first sounded on Capitol Hill on Tuesday where Senate Republicans and Democrats joined forces to demand the White House give three-monthly explanations on how it intends to "complete the mission" in Iraq.

The next day, Clinton weighed in from the Middle East, saying the war as it unfolded was "a big mistake". It was a good thing that Saddam Hussein has gone, "but I don't agree with what was done".

They underestimated "how easy it would be to overthrow Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country".

George W. Bush's Administration had made "several errors, including the total dismantlement of the authority structure of Iraq", the former President said. "We never sent enough troops and didn't have enough troops to control or seal the borders." Across those porous borders "the terrorists came in".

As passions have run ever higher this week, the venerable traditions that foreign policy arguments "stopped at the water's edge", seems to have been conclusively discarded.

The last Democratic President was in Dubai, in the heart of the Arab world, when he delivered his verdict on the war.

On Tuesday, US senators voted 79-19 to endorse a Republican amendment demanding a regular accounting for the war from the Bush Administration. Not only was it a bilateral statement that things could not go on as they were.

It came at the very moment Bush was in Asia, thanking Japan, South Korea and Mongolia for their contributions to coalition forces in Iraq.

From foreign soil, Bush fired back at his Democratic critics, accusing them of "playing politics in America", with their charges that his Administration had distorted pre-war weapons of mass destruction intelligence.

In short, a foreign trip by a sitting President no longer guarantees a cessation of hostilities at home.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, arguably the driving force behind the invasion, delivered a vitriolic retort to a conservative audience here on Wednesday, accusing Democrats of levelling "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city".

These critics, he suggested, had lost "either their memory or their backbone".

They were peddling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods" to gain political advantage while US soldiers died in Iraq.

But Democrats reacted with scorn, dismissing the "tired rhetoric" of a discredited vice-President. John Kerry, defeated by Bush last year, said "few people have less credibility" than Cheney, among whose pre-war assertions were the claims that Saddam was "re-constituting" nuclear weapons, and that the US invaders would be greeted with garlands.

But the most significant developments have come on Capitol Hill, as both parties signal that enough is enough. Respected Republican Chuck Hagel claimed the bipartisan vote was a "historic turning point" which saw Congress re-asserting its constitutional duty to oversee foreign policy.

Yesterday brought another stunning development as John Murtha, an old-school Democratic congressman, demanded an immediate withdrawal of US troops "because they have become the target".

Murtha voted for the 2003 invasion, but at a emotional press conference announced he had changed his mind.

"It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk," Murtha said, at times close to tears. "We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the US, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

- INDEPENDENT