No matter how much Tony Snow and the rest of the White House try to spin it, the fact remains – the news coming out of Iraq is not good. GOP Senators are also seeing this and not buying the typical spin:
Sen. George Voinovich said Tuesday the U.S. should begin pulling troops out of Iraq, joining Richard Lugar as the second Republican lawmaker in as many days to suggest President Bush’s war strategy is failing.
He said the Iraqi people must become more involved and “I don’t think they’ll get it until they know we’re leaving.”
The Ohio senator’s remarks followed similar comments by Lugar, R-Ind., the previous night. The two GOP senators previously had expressed concerns about Bush’s decision to send 30,000 extra troops to Iraq in a massive U.S.-led security push in Baghdad and Anbar province. But they had stopped short of saying U.S. troops should leave and declined to back Democratic legislation setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.
“We must not abandon our mission, but we must begin a transition where the Iraqi government and its neighbors play a larger role in stabilizing Iraq,” Voinovich wrote in a letter to Bush. (emphasis mine)
The last part is kind of idiotic. Hasn’t this been the goal since the surge? This is what is failing right now. Saying that doesn’t mean things are going to work. The mission is failed and our troops on the ground ARE NOT to blame. The ones to blame are the warhawks sitting in the White House and Pentagon who suffer such a disconnect from reality that it has lead us to this dark point in our history. Of course Bush won’t admit that, because it is admitting fault on his part. His opinion of himself matters more than the lives of our soldiers and security of our nation.