NYT: Warner’s Iraq Remarks Surprise White House

[habitual]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/world/middleeast/07capital.html

The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways,” responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment.

“I don’t believe that the president thinks that way,” Dana Perino, the deputy White House press secretary, said when asked whether the president agreed with the senator, John Warner of Virginia. “I think that he believes that while it is tough going in Iraq, that slow progress is being made.”

Ms. Perino’s carefully worded response underscores the delicate situation that Mr. Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has created for the White House just one month before an election in which Mr. Bush has been trying to shift the national debate from the war in Iraq to the broader war on terror.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday after returning from a trip that included a one-day stop in Baghdad, Mr. Warner said the United States should consider “a change of course” if the violence there did not diminish soon. He did not specify what shift might be necessary, but said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken “off the table.”

[tanyev]

1. What does it matter what the president thinks or believes when

all the facts say otherwise? Isn't there some holodeck somewhere we can dump all these losers to live out their delusional fantasies while the rest of us roll up our sleeves and try to fix the mess they've made?

[babylonsister]

5. Amen! It frosts me that 4 people in this admin are holding

the rest of us, and the soldiers, hostage to their delusions.

[Drum]

8. babylonsister,

you have hid the nail on the head! That's precisely what they've been doing, on many issues, for this long time now.
:thumbsup:

[rodeodance]

2. Warner is immoral- says he will wait 2-3 months! (post election)-when he

KNOWS that dire situation! dam him!

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

4. He should be pressed..WHY wait 2-3 months. A new direction has

been needed for YEARS!

[rodeodance]

3. looky-The WH countered with an email -saying Dems ......

The White House said Friday that Mr. Bush had not spoken to Mr. Warner about his comments, and otherwise insisted that it had not glossed over the problems in Iraq. During her afternoon briefing, Ms. Perino harked back to a speech in late August in which, she said, the president said Iraq was at a “crucial moment.” She said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had put forth the same message during her unannounced visit to Baghdad this week.

Later in the day, the White House circulated an e-mail message titled “Iraq Update: Political Progress,” citing comments of other lawmakers, including Democrats, who had returned from the Middle East with more hopeful assessments than the one offered by Mr. Warner.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. They'll paint him as a fringe player without much credibility

They eat their own more and more lately.

[nealmhughes]

7. Since when does a very senior senator and chairman need to get OK to

state his mind on an area in which he legislates?

Isn't the Senate supposed to be the world's most exclusive debate squad? Oh, wait, no, they are supposed to be a rubber stamp for fiat rule...and an enabler of our Potemkin Village Democracy.

Senator Warner and 434 others make the law. George Bush carries it out. In theory, anyhow...

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. "I don’t believe that the president thinks" - THAT's it!

.
.
.

Junior,

don't THINK, in fact he's not allowed to -

Pappy just pushed him up there to facilitate the PNACer gang's agenda.

If George can't run one oil company,

How did anyone expect him to run a country?

oops, sorry, I furgot,

The PNACers didn't WANT him to run the country -

They wanted him to RUIN it!

And he's succeeding . .

(sigh)