Baker's panel, Bush may differ about Iraq

WASHINGTON — President Bush's choice as new Pentagon chief told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the United States isn't winning in Iraq and that neighboring countries could be sucked into a regional war if the violence isn't contained within two years.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 21-0 after a five-hour hearing to send former CIA Director Robert Gates' nomination to the full Senate. It was expected to confirm him as soon as today as successor to Donald H. Rumsfeld, a key architect of the increasingly unpopular war.

Gates' non-Rumsfeldian frankness about Iraq was a signal to Congress and the White House that he will be more forthright than Rumsfeld, who frequently dismissed views that differed from his own upbeat assessments.

Moreover, Gates' pledges to consult lawmakers on Iraq strategy changes appeared to be a nod to Democrats, who won control of Congress — and thus the Pentagon budget — in the Nov. 7 election. The Democrats' big showing was widely seen as an expression of voter discontent over the war.

"I am open to a wide range of ideas and proposals," declared Gates, now president of Texas A&M University.

President Bush has insisted that U.S. troops are winning in Iraq.

"I know you want to pit a fight between Bob Gates and the president. It doesn't exist," said White House spokesman Tony Snow when pressed on the apparently conflicting views.

Snow asserted that Gates' full testimony showed that he and Bush agree that the United States must help Iraq become a country that can defend and govern itself.

Some 140,000 American troops and U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces have failed to curb an insurgency by Sunni Muslims or violence by Shiite Muslim militias linked to religious parties in the majority Shiite-dominated government. More than 2,900 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Some say a civil war in Iraq is already under way.

U.S. Army Reserve Master Sgt. Wayne Pyle, city manager for West Valley City, called the debate "a semantical question of absolutely no importance."

"If it is or if it isn't a civil war doesn't matter to the soldier on the ground," said Pyle, who is currently in Afghanistan with the 405th Civil Affair Battalion. "We know the Sunnis and Shi'a are fighting each other, we know the violence is bad and that we as the military are caught in the middle.