Jones survives war stand

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CORRECTION

A column by Rob Christensen on Dec. 24 incorrectly reported the number of letters that U.S. Rep. Walter Jones sent to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jones said he has sent 6,000 letters.

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There were those who thought U.S. Rep. Walter Jones had committed political hara-kiri last year.

There was Jones, a conservative Republican, saying 18 months ago that the Bush administration should set a timetable to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq beginning this fall.

Yes, that Walter Jones. The man behind renaming the french fries in the House cafeteria "freedom fries." The representative of a district in Eastern North Carolina that includes Camp Lejeune, the Marine base. And one of the favorite congressmen of Christian conservatives.

What, people asked, had gotten into Walter?

There were some angry words from constituents. The White House and the House Republican leadership let Jones know their displeasure. He turned up at a Washington news conference with some liberal Democrats. And there were predictions that the six-term House member from Pitt County was in political trouble.

But as it turned out, Jones was not booted out of office. He skated to an easy re-election in November.

Jones is the closest thing we have to former Sen. Jesse Helms, an independent conservative who doesn't mind taking on his own party. Jones has fought the big Republican budgets. He opposed the expansion of the Medicare prescription drug plan because he viewed it as budget-busting. And he has been a skeptic on the war.

It was the letters that turned Jones against the war.

"I write every family in this country who has had a loved one killed in Afghanistan or Iraq," Jones said in a recent interview in Raleigh.

Jones has signed 12,000 letters. The letters have gone not just to moms and dads, but also to extended families.

Jones, however, has not read most of the letters that the parents wrote in response.

"When I did a year or so ago, I broke down and cried," Jones said. "I don't want anybody to thank me for writing them because they gave a loved one. Mine is just a heart that aches because we should never have gone into Iraq to begin with. This has been my mea culpa."

In the patriotic aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jones voted for the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq.

"Probably many of us did not know the questions that should have been asked," Jones said. "Many of us, in both parties, felt we had to accept and trust the intelligence that was being given.

"When you go to Walter Reed or Bethesda [military hospitals] and see the legs gone, those who are paralyzed and cannot control their body movements, when you see the wounded in the head who will never, never be the same again, it just reinforces that you should never commit an American unless you know it's absolutely necessary.

"I think we in Congress have not met our responsibility based on the Constitution to declare war," Jones said. "There has got to be better checks and balances before you commit troops."

Now the Iraq Study Group and others are echoing what Jones said in early 2005. Jones said he does not feel vindicated.

"There is no way you can feel vindicated," he said, "when people are dying."