Printable Version Tell a friend

Loebsack back from Iraq

(Iowa City Press Citizen)WASHINGTON -- Freshman Rep. Dave Loebsack said conditions in Iraq "are more dire than I anticipated" and that he felt "physically endangered" during his first congressional trip to the Middle East.

Loebsack returned to Washington, D.C., on Thursday evening after a six-day trip that included stops in Baghdad, Iraq, Jordan and Brussels, Belgium.

"I always felt physically endangered, I felt threatened, even in the Green Zone with heavy security (the area where the U.S. Embassy is located)," Loebsack said in a telephone interview.

The troops "were great," he said, and no one asked about the nonbinding resolution passed by the House this month opposing President Bush's decision to deploy 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq.

Loebsack, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, voted in favor of the measure.

He said the troops weren't interested in politics.

"'We're just here to do our job,' is what they told me," said the Mount Vernon Democrat, a member of the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Readiness.

Loebsack said seeing the situation in Iraq for himself reinforced his belief that it was proper for Congress to oppose the troop increase.

"Yeah, I do even more so, believe that it was the right thing to do," he said. "I don't see how escalation is going to accomplish what we want."

Loebsack said he thinks Congress would place benchmarks and conditions on future supplemental appropriations for the war.

Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., chairman of the Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations led the delegation. The contingent also included Democrat Robert Andrews of New Jersey and Republican Reps. Todd Akin of Missouri, Michael Turner of Ohio and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.