Retiring Republican lawmaker calls Iraq war "a mistake"

Breaking ranks with his party and reversing his earlier stance, a retiring senior US Republican lawmaker on Wednesday blasted "massive failure" of intelligence before the Iraq war and called the war "a mistake."

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed,that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Representative Doug Bereuter of Nebraska said ina four-page statement to his constituents.

After 26 years on Capitol Hill, Bereuter is retiring next monthand will become the president of Asia Foundation, a nonprofit group seeking to foster closer ties between Asia and the United States.

He was until earlier this month the vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a panel that reviewed much of the evidencethe administration cited before going to war.

"The cost in casualties is already large and growing, and the immediate and long-term financial costs are incredible," he said.

Bereuter was particularly critical of the pre-war intelligence,which described an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inIraq. No such weapons have been found since the US-led invasion started in March last year.

He said the Bush administration was wrong to disband the Iraqi army, because so many of its members joined forces with the insurgents, and was wrong to rely on the Defense Department instead of the State Department to spearhead reconstruction and the interim government.

Bereuter also said the administration was wrong to ignore military leaders who warned more troops would be needed in Iraq tomaintain the postwar peace.

"Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world," Bereuter said.

It was important for both the executive and legislative branches of government to learn from the "errors and failures" relating to the war in Iraq and its aftermath, he said.

Bereuter voted in support of an October 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, which he said was based on what he had been told about the WMD threat from Iraq.

Source: Xinhua