Dick Cheney, a former Secretary of Defense, said on CBS, "To talk about a timetable that we will be out within a year, when you don't know what the objective is, and haven't really developed a plan for executing that, raises serious questions about the quality of the decision-making process within the Administration."

The House majority leader, Dick Armey, and the Republican whip, Tom DeLay, opposed deploying troops. Mr. DeLay called the plan a "big dangerous quagmire" and "another bad idea in a foreign policy with no focus."

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, told the Dallas Morning News right before the Kosovo mission began that "many question the path that has taken us to this point. I have my own questions about the long-term strategy of this campaign."

Most importantly, the President must provide a clear statement of our mission and the objectives. And he must provide an exit strategy for bringing our troops home. If these specifics are not provided to the satisfaction of Congress, funding for military deployment in Bosnia will end next May. Let me repeat: We are requiring the administration to clearly articulate our Bosnia policy, justify the use of military forces, and tell us when and under what circumstances our troops can come home.

"We were not told the truth before about the length of the deployment in Bosnia," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said, "That is affecting right now his request for troops into Kosovo."

"We have no exit strategy," McCain said. "We have no concept of how we want to settle this situation. The American people and the Congress deserve to know that."

"There is an overwhelming desire on the part of the American people and the Congress to move out of this situation that we've been in," McCain said.

Nickles, on "This Week," said the administration "misled" the public when it promised U.S. troops would be in Bosnia for one year. "We are very expensive peacekeepers and a lot of us question, you know, we really don't want our military to be a Peace Corps with M-16s," he said.

On CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he was "concerned about the safety of our troops while they're there, because you have in the Kosovo Liberation Army a group that knows how to fight, knows how to engage in tactics, are not going to be easily defeated, and I don't want them to think that we are there, in effect, suppressing their long-held desire for independence."

"If Bill Clinton is going to have the entry strategy, the rest of us should have the exit strategy," said [Bob] Dole, Republican of Kansas and a presidential candidate.

"I don't think that the president has kept his word on the commitments he made to Congress last year," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). "He said that he would keep the mission to a year. He didn't. He said he would arm and train the Bosnian Muslims. He hasn't. He said he would consult with Congress, and he hasn't."

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Republican of Texas, predicted a vigorous fight in Congress to block any new commitment of American forces. "We're not looking at Somalia," she said. "We're looking at Vietnam. They don't have a clear exit strategy."

"Whether it's the Administration's foolhardy rush to interpose American troops into a volatile situation, or the arbitrary one-year deadline the President is establishing for the deployment, it's hard to see the policy as anything but a tragic repeat of the military mission to Somalia," said Congressmen Cox. "And just as our troops were little more than sitting ducks in Somalia, so the main mission of our troops in Bosnia will be to serve as targets for the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia.

"Every step we take to involve ourselves in the war is a Vietnam-like commitment unless we're prepared to commit sufficient forces to see it all the way through to the end," Alexander said.