California Conservative

The Democratic responses to the President’s speech are flowing in. As expected, they’re both incoherent and negative to the nth degree. Here’s a sampling:

From House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: ‘The President Has Dug Us into a Deep Hole in Iraq; It Is Time for Him to Stop Digging’

“The President did not have a plan for victory when he went into his war of choice in Iraq, and he did not have a plan for victory today. The American people expected that the President would do more today than just put a new cover and 35 pages of rhetoric on old sound bites. What the American people wanted from the President today was some evidence that he has heard their concerns. Clearly, the President fails to understand that a new course is needed in Iraq. The President has dug us into a deep hole in Iraq; it is time for him to stop digging.
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“We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable. That is what the American people and our troops deserve.”

From DNC: Dean on Bush’s Failed Iraq Policy:

“Today, the President failed to give an honest assessment of what’s really happening on the ground in Iraq. Instead he released thirty-five pages of rhetoric and gave a speech full of slogans, but no clear plan. Let’s be clear, ’stay the course’ is a slogan, not a strategy.
“By failing to address critical factors on the ground, President Bush doesn’t seem to care what the facts are, and you can’t lead when you don’t care what the facts are. It’s troubling that with his credibility on the line, in the face of widespread concern from the American people, and a bi-partisan vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Senate, President Bush still refuses to produce a real strategy for success that includes benchmarks and a process for measuring success.

Tom Matzzie, the Washington director of MoveOn.org Political Action on President Bush’s speech on Iraq:

“The president’s speech on Iraq offered the same failed policy in a new wrapping. The speech and accompanying report are stunts in a spiffy public relations campaign that won’t protect America, our troops or help Iraqis. “One key measure: The Bush policy fails because it offers no assurances to Iraqis that U.S. troops won’t be there forever.”

There you have it, folks. Ms. Pelosi saying that we should adopt the Murtha Retreat and Surrender Option; Howard Dean saying that “the President he released thirty-five pages of rhetoric and gave a speech full of slogans” and that he failed “to address critical factors on the ground” and that “President Bush doesn’t seem to care what the facts are” and MoveOn.org’s Tom Matzzie asserts that “The Bush policy fails because it offers no assurances to Iraqis that U.S. troops won’t be there forever.”

To Ms. Pelosi: Get a grip. The Murtha Retreat and Surrender Option would be a disaster for Iraq, the Middle East in general and for our security here at home. Also, get some better briefers, like maybe Joe Lieberman, who just returned from Iraq and wrote an upbeat, at times gushing, op-ed about how much improvement he saw since his prior trip in April, 2005.

To Gov. Dean: Sit down and actually read the President’s 35 page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” before making an incoherent statement full of immature and incorrect information. If anyone’s sloganeering, it’s you, Sir, and it’s showing.

To Mr. Matzzie: The Bush policy doesn’t fail because it “offers no assurances to Iraqis that U.S. troops won’t be there forever.” It would fail if we told the Iraqis, though, if we gave the courageous and patriotic Iraqis a hint that we wouldn’t stay there long enough to get enough security forces trained so they can maintain their own security.

Further, I’d suggest that you’re the last group I’d want to hear from on military strategy based on MoveOn’s ad supposedly showing an American soldier who wouldn’t be home for Christmas, only to find out that it’s a picture of a British soldier instead.

James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com uses this quote from a captain serving in Iraq “One is in shorts (we don’t have shorts as a normal combat uniform), and the others are all clearly wearing British pattern fatigues,” the Army captain wrote, noting that people at MoveOn.org “don’t even know what an American soldier looks like!”

Yet these are the people criticizing the President for his failed policies in Iraq. Give me a break.

RELATED:
National Strategy for Victory In Iraq
Bush’s Speech, Dems’ Response

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2005 at 6:13 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, DNC, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Military, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.