Jane Harman: Military Not Succeeding in Iraq
Four days after the killing of top terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi brought the U.S. its most stunning military success of the Iraq war, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be fired because the military effort is failing.
"I don't think we're succeeding militarily," Rep. Jane Harman told "Fox News Sunday."
"Continuing the same course, you know, is not getting us anywhere," she insisted. "What would help with doubters - and there are doubters in both parties all over the country - [would be] if the president decided that Rumsfeld should go."
Harman credited the Zarqawi take-out to "wonderful police work" but added: "It won't reduce the insurgency, I don't believe."
The California Democrat criticized the strategy of going after terrorist leaders like Zarqawi as "playing whack-a-mole." "We kill one person, ten arise," she complained. "That's just not the strategy that can work."
Harman called the formation of a unity government "a great achievement," and said the U.S. should focus on bringing about a political solution to sectarian violence.
"But while we're part of the political solution, we're also part of the military problem," she insisted. "And having us continue to stay there, I don't think will achieve our objectives."
Harman called on President Bush to "start moving [U.S. troops] out of Iraq . . . We should have an over-the horizon force, no question."
