(5 of 6)
Even if all the diplomacy comes out right, neither foreign troops nor foreign money is likely to come flooding into Iraq. At their most optimistic, Pentagon planners assume that they can wheedle only another division--say, 15,000 troops--out of other nations, and it's a given that the really dangerous work in Iraq will continue to be done by Americans. As for the cash, Senator Kent Conrad, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, says the requested $87 billion is predicated on the assumption that $42 billion of reconstruction funds will come from other nations. So far, says Conrad, "they've got $300 million from Canada. Three hundred million dollars is a long way from $42 billion." (Wolfowitz told the Senate last week that "some $2 billion" had been pledged by other nations, which isn't much closer.) U.S. officials bravely say the donors' conference in Madrid will be an opportunity for other countries to shape the whole direction of the Iraqi economy. But so far, this pig has not been perfumed enough for anyone to buy it. "Everyone wants to be [in Madrid] as an observer," says a State Department official. "But they don't want to feel like they'll be left holding the bill."
It's the sheer scale of that bill that is beginning to spook Republicans. "There is consternation among the fiscal conservatives and the moderates over the $87 billion," says a senior House Republican aide. Though Senate majority leader Bill Frist told reporters he was confident that the Administration would get its money, Republicans insist that the Administration has to keep selling its case on the Hill. "It's not enough to send Powell up once a month," says this aide. "The case is going to have to be made repeatedly." And with a measure of supplication. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose arrogant style has long grated on Republicans on the Hill, frequently deferred to other Cabinet members in closed-door meetings last week, which is not his usual style. "Rumsfeld," says a Republican Senator who was at the meetings, was "as docile as a puppy."
That's wise. With nothing going right for the Administration, rumors swirled around the Pentagon that Rumsfeld--or maybe just Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith, the No. 3 in the Department of Defense--was on the way out, which would delight some of the brass. But that's unlikely. If Bush fired any of them, he would be confirming what most of official Washington now believes--that the planning and execution of postwar policy in Iraq has been bungled from the start.
If the jobs of Rumsfeld and his team are safe for now, some Republicans on the Hill are beginning to wonder whether the President's is not. A Senator who talks frequently to the White House says officials there are worried that without visible progress on Iraq, Bush's political credibility will be fatally damaged by next summer. "Once the credibility base is cracked," says this Senator, "it's all over. You can't get re-elected." Hence, he argues, the decision to seek help from other nations. Bush, says this Senator, "needs to share some of the blame for Iraq."