The White House on Wednesday rejected as “extreme” a proposal by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to cap the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.
“To tie one’s hand in a time of war is a pretty extreme move,” said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.
“What it does is something that no commander in chief I think would want to have, which is it binds the hands of the commander in chief and also the generals, and, frankly, also the troops on the ground, in terms of responding to situations and contingencies that may occur there.”
Clinton, who is expected to run for president, wants to cap the number of troops at the Jan. 1 level of 132,000 and block President Bush’s proposal to add 21,500 troops. The New York Democrat said the U.S. should be removing troops from Iraq, not adding to them.
“I believe our priorities are upside down,” she said at a news conference with other members of Congress who recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clinton accused Bush of improperly allocating U.S. troops throughout the broader Middle East.
“He’s taking troops away from Afghanistan — where I think we need to be putting more troops — and sending them to Iraq on a mission that I think has a very limited, if any, chance for success,” she told NBC.
Snow disputed Clinton’s assertion of a troop shift.
“That’s just not the case,” he said. “There will not be any direct move, just shipping people from one theater of battle to the other.”
Clinton also said “the administration refuses to pursue … any kind of regional conference” on Iraq, another assertion that Snow disputed.
“She said that the administration had refused,” he said. “We [have] been instrumental in forwarding the Iraq Compact, which brings together countries throughout the region.”
