Casey wants to ask 'tough questions' about war

Bob Casey Jr. is no peace activist, but he's brimming with questions about the war in Iraq.

In an interview Thursday, the state treasurer said Pennsylvania needs a senator willing to ask "tough questions" - a phrase he repeated five times - but his own inquiries focus more on the war's execution than its rationale.

Casey opposes a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. He views the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes as "sometimes" appropriate. He supported renewal of the Patriot Act and was tarred as more hawkish than deposed Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) by some liberal pundits.

Despite these areas of overlap with President Bush and Sen. Rick Santorum, the Democratic nominee presented his platform as a clear break from GOP policies. He cited honesty and competence as the bedrock of war planning and said those values are damnably absent from the Bush White House.

"The president and his administration are good at spinning and making their policy look as good as it can instead of being more truthful about it," Casey said. "Then the policy gets rubberstamped by Rick Santorum, no tough questions are asked, and the American people are left with very little in the way of facts."

Americans are frustrated by the war's apparent stalemate stage, and a mounting death count increases those qualms every day, Casey said. He did not indicate how he would have voted on the 2002 war authorization bill, but he said there is little doubt the president misled the nation at the time of deliberations.

"If we knew that this weapons of mass destruction theory was largely a lie, all of the so-called justifications were not there," Casey said. "I also think Americans understand we are there, and we have to do everything possible to achieve victory and to be successful and to stabilize the Iraqi government so they can completely take over and fight off any kind of resistance that they see now."

Casey said the president should establish a clear exit strategy to remove U.S. troops from the danger zone, but he nixed the idea of setting a date for withdrawal. He called for the establishment of measurable war objectives but stopped short of delineating those goals.

The next stage involves holding the president and key officials to account for flubbed war aims, Casey said. Goals are "changing all the time," and the fight has been mismanaged from the beginning. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "should have been fired a long time ago," and the Senate needs to open hearings on pre-war intelligence, insufficient body armor and sagging support from traditional U.S. allies.

Casey faulted Santorum for failing to address these issues and challenged the senator to launch a probe of "war profiteering" before his term expires.

"Where's the $9 billion?" Casey asked. "What about Halliburton? What about all this waste? A lot of guys got millions of dollars in contracts, but our troops didn't get body armor, and that's not only outrageous, it borders on criminality."

With pending conflicts in North Korea, Iran and other fronts, the United States needs leaders who are trustworthy, Casey said. He did not rule out military action in those countries, but echoed many Republican leaders in declaring a need to "keep all options on the table."

Can the terrorist threat ever be completely eliminated- through force or otherwise?

"I'm afraid the answer is no," Casey said. "That's why we have to be ever-vigilant. And that's why both on terrorism and on homeland security, we've got a lot more to do."

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