Congress Demands Iraq Answers

After an Easter recess that produced a basketful of anxious concerns – from the political firestorm over U.S. deaths to the fallout from two books on White House war planning – Congress came back to work Tuesday demanding to know just what is going on in Iraq, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts.

"I'm not here to paint a rosy picture or to view this through rose-colored glasses. There are enormous problems," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate the Armed Services Committee.

That stark assessment aside, the Pentagon's number two civilian official insisted things will get better when control is handed back to Iraqis at the end of June. But

"Mr. Secretary, I must say I found your presentation here this morning somewhat disingenuous," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

"I would have preferred you hadn't used that word 'disingenuous,'" replied Wolfowitz. "I am trying my best to be candid with this committee and with the American people."

Across the hall at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it wasn't the presentation but the lack of it that had senators' backs up. Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated that the White House sent no one to explain how it was going to hand off power in Iraq.

"I think it's outrageous the administration has not provided every witness we've asked for," said the committee's top Democrat, Joe Biden of Delaware.

The panel's Republican chairman was also angry. "The administration has failed to communicate its Iraq plans and cost estimates to Congress and to the American people," said Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana.

It's especially troubling as lawmakers are anticipating another huge bill for Iraq, one some experts put at $50 billion.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va. and chairman of the Armed Services panel, opened his hearing noting the rise in violence in Iraq this month and saying insurgents "seek to delay their inevitable defeat" by occupation forces.

"The importance of this hearing cannot be overstated," said Warner. "We are at a critical juncture ... in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

The hearings, the first of five scheduled for administration officials on Capitol Hill this week, come during the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since the war began – 100 killed in the increasingly violent insurgency. Some estimate over 1,000 Iraqis have died, including civilians, insurgents and police.

Throughout the week, administration officials are likely to face questions on what is being done to calm the increased violence in Iraq, whether troop levels are high enough and exactly how the administration intends to work with the United Nations. U.S. occupation authorities, who long shunned a substantive U.N. role in Iraq, are now counting on it to help devise a plan for forming a new Iraqi government to accept sovereignty on the turnover date.

Wolfowitz said Tuesday that even though the United States intends to seek a new U.N. resolution on Iraq, the effort is unlikely to persuade more allies to put troops into the campaign as long as fighting continues.

"I do think there are quite a few countries who aren't going to come in until it's safer to come in," he said.

The administration has been trying for months to get more countries to help with the campaign. Instead, allies continue to leave. Spain's coming pullout of 1,300 soldiers and an announcement late Monday that Honduras also plans to withdraw its 370 troops were blows to President Bush's portrayal of a solid international coalition trying to pacify a chaotic Iraq.