WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a Democratic presidential candidate, says President Bush's policy of sending more U.S. troops to Iraq "is asking for disaster."
Dodd spoke Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
The president's new policy is just "more of the same" for Iraq, he said. Putting 20,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq -- 17,000 of them "in Baghdad, a city of 6 million people where 23 militias are operating today -- is asking for disaster," Dodd said.
Dodd said he visited Iraq three weeks ago and "every single officer I talked to in Baghdad ... tells us that this (surge in Baghdad) is a huge mistake."
Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska also appeared on the program and criticized the new policy.
But Sen. Joe Lieberman, Dodd's independent colleague from Connecticut, said, "Nobody's happy with where we are now, but this plan offers the prospect of security, which is the precondition to the political settlement and the economic development that we know has to happen for Iraq to take off on its own."
And Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., suggested that the new policy's critics were not showing "good faith."
Bush has "announced a new strategy, and it seems to me ... the country needs to be unified, needs to give this new strategy a chance. Why was it criticized even before it was announced? It doesn't seem to me that that's a good-faith approach to try to win in Iraq."
