Members air contrasting views on Iraq during Petraeus hearings

The politics surrounding the testimony of top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus suggest the two parties have hardened their positions in an election year that will determine the next phase of the war.

Republicans, heartened by the reduction in violence that accompanied President Bush’s troop level increases, aggressively rejected troop withdrawal as a surrender that endangers the homeland.

{mosads}Democrats, emboldened by polls that show the war continues to be unpopular along with the recent uptick in violence, continued to press for a way out of Iraq.

Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, appearing Wednesday before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, essentially leaned toward the Republican arguments. Both said a rapid withdrawal would damage the security of the United States.

“You would see a spiral down, and that would lead to expanded sectarian conflict,” Crocker told Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.). “It would bring the neighbors, especially Iran, into the fight. And it would create a space for al Qaeda.”

Petraeus and Crocker offered little new information one day after they faced questions from three presidential candidates during two Senate committee hearings on the same topic.

The protests that have become a staple of such high-profile hearings were muted, literally. Two people were ejected without having said a word and without so much as a pause from Petraeus or Crocker during the reading of their opening statements.

One man was ejected after raising his hand in a peace sign 23 minutes into the hearing. The committee’s deputy staff director ordered the expulsion entirely with hand signals.

Another woman attended the hearing wearing a Code Pink T-shirt and a headscarf and had painted fake blood on her hands. The headscarf, staff said, was fine. Blood on the hands is not allowed in House Armed Services Committee hearings.

Both were ejected by a press secretary without police being brought in and without yelling out a word. Committee members, reading along with Petraeus’s prepared testimony, might not have noticed except for the flurry of clicking shutters.

Some of the most pointed statements and questions came from members who face contested primaries and spirited general elections.

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), who has a Democratic opponent this year, pressed Crocker on the one area where Republicans were prepared to criticize the Bush administration: reconstruction costs.

“At a time when Americans are paying all-time high gas prices, doesn’t it make sense that Iraq should be paying for its own reconstruction?” he said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, gave up her questioning time to Chabot, allowing him to leap past five more senior members of the panel.

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), who recently filed to challenge Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), stumbled a bit when he pressed Crocker on political reconciliation and said there’d been no provincial elections in Sunni provinces. Crocker corrected him, saying there had been elections, but Sunnis had boycotted them.

Andrews kept at it, saying there still really wasn’t political reconciliation.

“It is now five years,” Andrews said. “No hydrocarbon law, no meaningful distribution of the provinces, no de-Baathification law. Why should the American people wait five more minutes for that to happen?”

Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who faces a May 6 primary challenge that centers on his opposition to the war, pressed Petraeus on the cost of the U.S. commitment.

“This government right now is borrowing money from foreign governments to pay its bills,” Jones said. “I want to make sure the Iraqi government understands we do not have blood and treasure to go on and on.”