Gates Before the Senate: Welcome Candor on Iraq

Tuesday, Dec. 05, 2006 By DOUGLAS WALLER

U.S. Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates appears before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 5, 2006.

JIM YOUNG / REUTERS

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After four years of rosy predictions and verbal sparring from Donald Rumsfeld over the Iraq war, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee were desperate for some candor out of the man George Bush has picked to replace him — and that's what they got as Bob Gates's confirmation hearing began Tuesday morning. Sen. Carl Levin, who will take over the committee chairmanship in January, hit Gates with a loaded question right off the bat: "Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?"

Gates was equally blunt in responding. "No, sir," he said simply.

Levin's follow-up question was just as freighted. The senator pulled out a quote from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, from a Nov. 23 press conference, and read it to Gates: "The crisis is political, and it is the politicians who must try to prevent more violence and bloodletting. The terrorist acts are a reflection of the lack of political accord." Levin asked Gates if he agreed with Maliki's statement.

"Yes sir, I do," Gates answered.

Gates's answer was important. In Levin's view, Maliki's statement reinforced the Democrats' own arguments for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces. "There's no military solution here now," Levin explained to TIME last week. "There's only a political solution now. That's why we should not put so much emphasis on a military solution and we should force the politicians to reach some kind of compromise on Iraq."

In response to another question from Levin, Gates indicated that he would be open to modest troop withdrawals to force the Iraqi political leadership to take on more responsibility for security. "All options are on the table," Gates said. He also was not shy about suggesting that Rumsfeld had made misjudgments in the Iraq war. Asked by Republican John McCain if the Pentagon had too few troops in Iraq at the outset — something the senator has long argued — Gates agreed. "There clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion," the former CIA director said.

Levin, who had voted against Gates's nomination to be CIA director 15 years ago, seemed almost relieved that the current president of Texas A&M was willing now to take over the Defense Department. Simply hearing Gates acknowledge that the U.S. was not winning the war is "a necessary, refreshing breath of reality," Levin said.

If senators like Levin are won over, Gates will face little trouble getting confirmed. Levin was one of those who voted against Gates when he last appeared before the Senate for confirmation hearings — after George Herbert Walker Bush picked him to be CIA director in 1991 and critics accused him slanting intelligence to suit anti-Soviet hardliners during the Reagan administration. Levin threw out only one softball question about those old charges — which Gates easily handled. Levin was far more interested in how Gates would deal with Iraq.

Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group that will make public its recommended course corrections on Wednesday, said he was "open to a wide range of ideas and proposals." He also insisted that despite Bush's stay-the-course rhetoric, the President "wants me to take a fresh look" at Iraq.