In Strong Words, Bush Tries to Redirect Debate on Iraq: 01-11-06

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/politics/11prexy.html
January 11, 2006
In Strong Words, Bush Tries to Redirect Debate on Iraq: NY Times

By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - President Bush issued a stark warning to Democrats on Tuesday about how to conduct the debate on Iraq as midterm elections approach, declaring that Americans know the difference between "honest critics" and those "who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people."

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars here, Mr. Bush appeared to be trying to pre-empt a renewal of arguments about whether to begin a withdrawal immediately, as Representative John Murtha argued in November, or whether to keep a large presence in Iraq through the year.

Democrats themselves have been deeply divided on that issue, even while criticizing Mr. Bush's conduct of the war.

In some of his most combative language yet directed at his critics, Mr. Bush said Americans should insist on a debate "that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries." That follows a theme that Vice President Dick Cheney set last week, when he said critics of the administration's conduct of the war risked undercutting the effort to defeat the insurgency.

At a meeting at the White House on Thursday with former secretaries of state and defense, Mr. Bush was warned several times that if he neglected to build support at home, he could face the problems that the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations faced with Vietnam.

Mr. Bush's response was to insist that he had a strategy to win the war in Iraq - something administration officials say they do not believe their predecessors had in Vietnam - and he repeated that in his speech.

"We have a responsibility to our men and women in uniform, who deserve to know that once our politicians vote to send them into harm's way, our support will be with them in good days and in bad days," Mr. Bush said. "And we will settle for nothing less than complete victory."

By referring to a vote, Mr. Bush was apparently alluding to the Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein, if necessary.

Part of the White House strategy in recent months has been to note how many of the administration's critics voted for that resolution, and turned against the war only after it became difficult.

Mr. Bush was speaking in the same hotel ballroom where last month he described the effort to reconstruct Iraq, admitting to major mistakes in the early part of that process. But in that speech he faced a skeptical audience: the Council on Foreign Relations, whose members greeted him with tepid applause.

Today, in front of 425 members of the V.F.W., Mr. Bush received standing ovations. The group, which recently passed a resolution supporting the Iraq action, interrupted Mr. Bush repeatedly as he predicted that progress would be made in fighting the insurgency and in stabilizing the newly elected government.

At the same time he acknowledged the charges of human rights violations by the Iraqi police, who he said have been "accused of committing abuses against Iraqi civilians."

"That's unacceptable," he said, and he said the United States was adjusting how it trains the Iraqi officers, including the establishment of an ethics and leadership institute in Baghdad to establish a curriculum for the nine police academies.

Mr. Bush made no references to the disclosures during the past year to Americans' abuses of detainees, in Iraq and elsewhere.

He also acknowledged the slow progress in restoring basic services, but argued that the problems paled in comparison with the progress he sees in Iraq.

"The vast majority of Iraqis prefer freedom with intermittent power, to life in the permanent darkness of tyranny and terror," he said, an amplification of the theme he promoted in December in an effort to build support for the war at home.

He also pressed countries that have promised aid to Iraq to make good on their pledges. He praised Slovakia and Malta for forgiving all of Iraq's previous debts to those countries - though their concessions amounted to a couple of hundred million dollars. Among large countries, only the United States has forgiven all past Iraqi debt.

But it was Mr. Bush's warning to Democrats that led him into new territory.

"There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate, and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas," he said. But he never singled out his critics by name.

Only one Democratic member of Congress attended the speech: Representative Adam Schiff, whose district includes Pasadena and other Los Angeles suburbs. Mr. Schiff was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who met with Mr. Bush last month, and he was invited by the White House to attend the speech.

"I think that the new initiative of the president to reach out to Democrats and former officials is positive," Mr. Schiff said in an interview after the speech was over. "I agree that we need to conduct a debate on Iraq in constructive terms."

But, he said, "some of the culprits in coarsening the dialogue on the war have been Republicans, including the vice president at times."

Any effort at finding what the White House calls a "common ground" on Iraq strategy, he said, "has to be coupled with a cessation of calling people who disagree with the strategy 'unpatriotic.' "

In discussing Iraqi politics, Mr. Bush directly addressed Sunni Arabs, a minority in the new government, saying, "Compromise and consensus and power-sharing are the only path to national unity and lasting democracy."

He added, "A country that divides into factions and dwells on old grievances cannot move forward and risks sliding back into tyranny."
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Comment: Sliding back into tyranny?! How about domestic tyranny inside the United States? This behavior is A sign of the Fuhrer-Puppet of Amerikan Fascism ‘in power and insecure’, but an insecure desperate fool can be dangerous, esp. if he is President of the United States of Amerika in the Oval Office Cabal.
~Peta de Aztlan
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