http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050627/27bush.htmHit by friendly fireJune 27, 2005
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."
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http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050620/20hagel.htmNational Security Watch: Sen. Chuck Hagel criticizes President Bush's performance on IraqJune 20, 2005
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On mistakes made in Iraq:
"We didn't plan right, we didn't know what we were getting into, and we weren't prepared. It's borne out in what's going on and the mess that we're in today. We made basic mistakes going into Iraq from the beginning. We never had enough troops going in. We should have had at least double or triple. There was one bad decision after another. One bad decision was allowing Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to run postwar Iraq."
On Vice President Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes":
"I don't know where the vice president is getting his information from. It's not where I'm getting mine from. This administration at the top–the civilian leaders–is disconnected from what's going on.
On what happens next:
"I think what we're in for is really framing up the next six months. You've got some absolutely critical deadlines that the Iraqi government and this government have committed to. Those timelines must be maintained. We are where we are. We're not going to go back and unwind all the bad decisions. I think we've got about six months. If things don't start to turn around in six months, then it may be too late. I think it's that serious."
On U.S. troops:
"We keep putting our forces who are over there in these impossible situations, asking them to do these impossible things when there's not enough force structure over there and there never was enough force structure. It's an absolute joke to say that we have a coalition of the willing."