Article Last Updated: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 3:15:24 AM PST
Contradictions abound in views on Iraq
By Timothy M. Phelps
NEWSDAY
WASHINGTON -- Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and chief architect of the war in Iraq, was as upbeat as ever last week as he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Iraq has seen the beginning of a tremendous transformation for the better in the 12 months since its liberation," the former professor said. On that same day, 22 Iraqis in U.S. custody were killed in an attack on a Baghdad prison and the United States reached a grisly milestone of 100 dead soldiers in a single month, the highest death toll since the U.S. invasion began more than a year earlier.
It was a contradiction noted frequently last week as key policy-makers from Defense and State, as the bastions of war and diplomacy are known here, were summoned to hearing rooms in both the House and Senate. But nowhere were the contradictions more apparent than before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Sometimes I wonder if we're living on the same planet," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., to State's Undersecretary Marc Grossman after he gave similarly rosy testimony. "Come off it," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., to Grossman, and the administration as a whole, at another point.
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