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Obama to Meet Congressional Leaders Over Iraq Obama and Lawmakers Meet to Discuss Iraq Action
(about 11 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama is scheduled to meet with congressional leaders on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the United States response to advances by Sunni militants in Iraq, the administration said. WASHINGTON — President Obama and congressional leaders on Wednesday privately confronted the politically delicate question of whether Mr. Obama would be required to ask Congress for permission to take military action against Sunni fighters in Iraq, but emerged from an hourlong Oval Office meeting with different views of what was said.
The meeting, at 3 p.m. in the Oval Office, is to include the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio; the minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada; and the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told reporters afterward that the president indicated that he would keep lawmakers posted on his Iraq deliberations but did not intend to seek additional authorization if he chooses to provide military assistance to the Iraqi government.
The White House said it was part of Mr. Obama’s continuing consultations with congressional leaders on foreign policy issues, including the crisis in Iraq. But White House officials and Democratic aides said Mr. Obama did not rule out the possibility of coming to Congress for a vote to back his actions, depending on what he decides to do. Mr. Obama, they said, told the lawmakers that administration lawyers were looking at the legal implications of potential actions, which officials have said could include targeted drone strikes but will not involve combat troops.
A senior administration official said on Tuesday that Mr. Obama was considering a limited campaign of airstrikes on Sunni militants similar to the counterterrorism strikes in countries like Yemen, most likely using drones. Such strikes would be limited in scope and would not commence for days, the official said. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals about action the president might take since, as we discussed earlier, he is still reviewing his options when it comes to direct action,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said before the meeting. “So I think I would say we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, if we get there.”
Mr. Obama’s national security advisers have presented him with a “sliding scale” of military options ranging from providing more American advisers, equipment and intelligence support to the beleaguered Iraqi Army to conducting airstrikes targeting members of the militant group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the official said. The congressional debates to authorize the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more than a decade ago were among the most contentious in recent memory. And after more than a decade of war, many lawmakers remain deeply wary of again taking up the issue. Indeed, the prospect of a messy debate over war is something that Democrats would like to avoid in the middle of an election year.
Mr. Obama has said that it is mainly up to Iraqi leaders to resolve the crisis by mending divisions between sects and finding a political solution to the crisis. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has told Democrats that he thinks the president has the authority to move without approval from Congress to pursue any action short of using ground forces, and that he should do so. The authorizations to use force in Afghanistan and Iraq remain in place. But White House officials said the question of whether they would apply to new action in Iraq would depend on exactly what military actions, if any, Mr. Obama decided to take.
“There is no military solution that will solve Iraq’s problems,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, “which is why we’ve been urgently pressing Iraq’s leaders across the political spectrum to govern in a nonsectarian manner, to promote stability and unity among Iraq’s diverse population, to address the legitimate grievances of Iraq’s Sunni, Kurd and Shia communities, and build and invest in the capacity of Iraq’s security forces.” The meeting on Wednesday did little to make clear whether Mr. Obama had decided on a course of action in Iraq, where Sunni militants have seized several cities north of Baghdad. In separate statements, White House officials and lawmakers only disclosed that the president had reviewed his options with congressional leaders.
Mr. Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, said in a written statement: “The speaker expects the president to offer a coherent strategy to ensure that Iraq does not descend further into lawless barbarism. We spent years, vast sums of money, and, most importantly, thousands of American lives to improve Iraq’s security and make America safer. Squandering that legacy would be a tragic mistake.” “I do not believe the president needs any further legislative authority to pursue the particular options for increased security assistance discussed today,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said after the meeting.
Lawmakers in both parties have criticized Mr. Obama for not consulting Congress before agreeing this month to exchange five Taliban detainees held by the United States for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the lone American prisoner of war in Afghanistan. In addition to Mr. McConnell and Ms. Pelosi, the meeting included Mr. Reid and House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio.
Administration officials have defended the secrecy, contending that they had to act quickly because Sergeant Bergdahl’s health was in jeopardy. They also said they had feared that any disclosure of the prisoner swap might endanger the deal and the soldier’s life. A statement by the White House said that Mr. Obama provided “an update on the administration’s efforts to respond to the threat” from a group that the White House calls the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. “He also reviewed our efforts to strengthen the capacity of Iraq’s security forces to confront the threat from ISIL, including options for increased security assistance.” (The group is also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.)
Last summer, Mr. Obama summoned congressional leaders to the Oval Office to win their support for an attack on Syria for its use of chemical weapons. He ultimately decided against an attack, after Syria agreed to hand over its chemical stockpile. The meeting recalled a similar session between the president and lawmakers at the White House in September at which the president sought the backing of House leaders for a threatened missile strike against Syria. Mr. Obama had put his plans for such an attack on hold to seek a congressional mandate.
After that meeting, Mr. Boehner and the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, both expressed support for military action, only to find that an overwhelming majority of House members opposed any significant engagement in the Syrian civil war.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, by a narrow margin, also approved giving Mr. Obama limited authority for military action in Syria. But broader support in the Senate never coalesced, and Mr. Obama ended up seizing a Russian proposal in which Syria agreed to voluntarily relinquish its chemical weapons stockpiles.
White House officials noted that the Iraqi government was pleading for military help, while strikes in Syria would have been waged against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Oval Office meeting took place amid intense debate about what Mr. Obama should do in Iraq and who was to blame. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney wrote that “rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
Mr. Carney dismissed Mr. Cheney’s criticism with a quip: “Which president was he talking about?”