http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1rpOvfM6hK8&refer=homeJan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's plan to boost U.S. forces in Iraq drew fire from Republican senators and from Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who called it ``a tragic mistake.''
The plan is ``the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam,'' Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska, told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a hearing of the committee today.
The debate, which centered on whether the U.S. was plunging itself into a civil war, reflected the political difficulties Bush faces in selling the strategy to the Congress and the American public.
Rice defended Bush's plan to deploy 21,500 more soldiers and Marines to Baghdad and Anbar province to the west in an attempt to defeat insurgents and end violence among Sunnis and Shiites. Biden said the troops were being sent into ``the midst of a civil war.''
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