WASHINGTON — Congress, out of town while Iraq slipped toward rebellion, returns to work this week demanding that the Bush administration spell out plans for securing the increasingly chaotic country and handing power over to Iraqis in less than three months.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has called administration officials to testify Tuesday about how they plan to make Iraq safer and whether having 135,000 U.S. troops there is enough.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding three days of hearings looking at what needs to be done before the June 30 deadline for turning power over to a yet-to-be-identified provisional government.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and the top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, have taken the administration to task for more than a year for what they regard as slipshod planning of the war, the occupation and reconstruction.
http://www.detnews.com/2004/politics/0404/19/a04-126888.htm