A couple of quotes today worth noting:
First, Senator Harry Reid telling it like it is:
The President today asked the American people to trust him as he continues to follow the same failed strategy that has drawn our troops further into an intractable civil war. The President’s policies have failed and his escalation endangers our troops and hurts our national security. Neither our troops nor the American people can afford this strategy any longer.
Democrats will send President Bush a bill that gives our troops the resources they need and a strategy in Iraq worthy of their sacrifices. If the President vetoes this bill he will have delayed funding for troops and kept in place his strategy for failure.
The solution to Iraq — an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself — is more than a military mission. Precisely the reason why I sent more troops into Baghdad.
compare that to what he said in 2005 (before the 2006 election of course):
Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave.
2 Comments
April 19, 2007 at 9:12 pm
“The President today asked the American people to trust him as he continues to follow the same failed strategy that has drawn our troops further into an intractable civil war. The President’s policies have failed and his escalation endangers our troops and hurts our national security. Neither our troops nor the American people can afford this strategy any longer.”
Is this the same Harry Reid that asked his constituents to trust him when he voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2002?
“We stopped the fighting [in 1991] based on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.” –2002 H. Reid
The prerequisite to any civil society is the establishment of order and the state’s monopoly on the use of force. An increase or “surge” of American force for this ends, specifically in Baghdad, with troops already in the theatre is what Bush is referring to in your quote. There’s no contradiction between this policy and transfering security over to Iraq. In fact, they are closely linked.
April 20, 2007 at 9:10 am
Bob,
My reasoning for quoting Bush was to make fun of the logic in his comment:
His logic is…well, some of us wonder how he got through Yale. The solution in Iraq is more than a military mission is what he says, and for that reason he sends more troops? Huh? If you send more troops, aren’t you signaling that you think the solution requires more military? But then you say the solution is more than a military solution. I’m just showing, using his own words, how foolish of a man we have as president.