{ Andy Card } Former Bush Chief: Critics Want Failure

McLean, Va. (AP) -- Congressional critics of President Bush's Iraq policy "seem to be rooting for failure," former White House chief of staff Andrew Card said Tuesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Card said lawmakers' efforts to mandate withdrawal timelines and threats to cut funding go beyond the scope of their duties. And he blamed critics in both parties for putting a negative slant on the war.

"We should be rooting for success," Card said. "I'm very upset that I see many of his critics, who are partisans, Republicans or Democrats, who seem to be rooting for failure. You know, they don't like his plan, therefore they want it to fail."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he would try to eliminate money for the war if Bush rejects Congress' proposal to set a deadline to end combat. Besides Reid, Card said, "there are several of them who are getting in the way of the president's plans being implemented."

"Their job is to fund it, provide policy guidance through laws, but they're not supposed to be the tacticians," Card said. "I find that far too many members of Congress are trying to be tacticians."

Card rejected any talk that Bush is too secluded as a leader and rarely hears opposing viewpoints.

I can’t make a case for Democrats EVER being on the up and up about ANYTHING, but it’s disingenuous to say that they are “rooting for failure”.

Consider it the currency of the Democrats rhetoric. And you can most certainly bet that somewhere in the back of the small minds that dish far worse (than what you take issue with)...there is at least a nagging thought about the political consequences of success in Iraq.

Right on both counts, but not germane to the points I was making. I just find it once again, to be too tiresome a litany, too well-rehearsed, and unfortunately too late to do any good in converting anyone, especially in light of how the Administration has failed to sell the war.
ANd yes, I do see how there would be negative consequences for the Dems if the war were seen to be a “success”, but they’re managing to paint it as a failure now, and to the degree they need to to look like principled partisans in their opposition:they are putting everything on this roll of the dice, just like Bush was putting his reputation and legacy on HIS roll of the dice, which was waging the war in the first place. Unfortunately for the Bush people, they have NO ONE out there to expose this Dem cynicism for what it is, they just repeat that litany over and over.

Here is the link to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that you might like. It addresses why our message is not clear. We try to pretend that our problem is with Iraqis, when the real enemy is Iran. Why President Bush has not wanted to state this is my question to him.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009893

Cold War II
What Islamist Iran has in common with the Soviet Union.

BY DAVID HAZONY

A new Cold War is upon us. Though there is no Soviet Union today, the enemies of Western democracy, supported by a conglomerate of Islamic states, terror groups and insurgents, have begun to work together with a unity of purpose reminiscent of the Soviet menace: not only in funding, training and arming those who seek democracy’s demise; not only in mounting attacks against Israel, America and their allies around the world; not only in seeking technological advances that will enable them to threaten the life of every Western citizen; but also in advancing a clear vision of a permanent, intractable and ultimately victorious struggle against the West—an idea they convey articulately, consistently and with brutal efficiency.

It is this conceptual strategic clarity that gives the West’s enemies a leg up, even if they are far inferior in number, wealth, and weaponry. From Tehran to Tyre, from Chechnya to the Philippines, from southern Iraq to the Afghan mountains to the madrassas of London and Paris and Cairo, these forces are unified in their aim to defeat the West, its way of life, its political forms and its cause of freedom.

-—snip-—

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