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 News from Around the Americas | December 2005 
Bush Dismisses Dean's Comments on Iraq War
 Edwin Chen - LATimes
| | In an interview with WOIA radio in San Antonio, Texas, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said that the 'idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,' and that the conflict resembled the protracted Vietnam war. (AFP/Getty Images) |
Washington - Top Republicans and Democrats exchanged sharp new words over the Iraq war today, as President Bush dismissed as "pessimists" those raising questions about his strategy and calling for a troop withdrawal.
The president spoke to reporters at the White House after Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said on a San Antonio, Texas, radio station that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."
Bush was asked about Dean's comments during a photo-op after meeting with Lee Jong-Wook, director general of the World Health Organization.
"Oh, there's pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points," the president replied. "Our troops need to know that the American people stand with them, and we have a strategy for victory."
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also quickly weighed in, saying that Dean had "made it clear the Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender," and he urged Democrats to abandon such "negative and harmful political rhetoric."
In upstate New York, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the administration's determination to resist a hasty withdrawal of troops. In an address at Ft. Drum to several thousand troops newly returned from the war, he said that it would be "unwise in the extreme" to leave prematurely.
"To leave that country before the job is done would be to hand Iraq over to car bombers and assassins," Cheney said. "That nation would return to the rule of tyrants and become a massive source of instability in the Middle East."
The debate over the course of the war has intensified in recent weeks, particularly after Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a longtime war hawk, called for a troop withdrawal from Iraq.
"When you fight an insurgency, you have to win the hearts and minds of the [Iraqi] people, and we've lost the hearts and minds of the people," Murtha said this morning on NBC's "Today Show."
In the face of such doubts, which also are reflected in public opinion polls, the Bush administration has begun aggressively touting the president's war strategy. He delivered a major address on the war last week at the U.S. Naval Academy and is scheduled to give another Iraq speech Wednesday, focusing on the efforts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy.
Several leading Senate Democrats sent Bush a letter today calling on him to articulate specific military, economic and political benchmarks to be met in order to begin withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Iraq.
"We hope that in your speech tomorrow you will set aside the public relations campaign and deliver the plan all Americans are seeking," wrote Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. |
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