More on this one, from yesterday...
A day after guerrillas shot down a helicopter in Iraq and killed 16 Americans, President Bush said Monday that attackers are trying to drive away coalition forces but that "America will never run." Bush did not mention Sunday’s casualties as he addressed a group of small business owners and community leaders at an Alabama factory. However, he spoke of U.S. casualties and said, "Some of the best have fallen in service to our fellow Americans. We mourn every loss," the president said. "We honor every name. We grieve with every family. And we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders." Sunday’s missile attack, which also wounded 20 troops, closed out a week that began with a similarly grim new record. On Oct. 27, three dozen people died in a wave of suicide bombings in Baghdad, the bloodiest day there since Bush declared major combat over May 1. "The enemy in Iraq believes America will run," the president said. "That’s why they’re willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops. America will never run."
| That's what we had yesterday. Here's the Dems chiming in... |
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday on CBS’s "The Early Show" that the United States must finish the job it started in Iraq. "If we lose the peace in Iraq that entire part of the world becomes chaos. You have Iran becoming a powerful, powerful force there surrounded by two failed states - Afghanistan and Iraq," he said. Biden criticized the Bush administration’s war effort for lacking a "sense of urgency" in securing the peace and said more troops are needed for the job. The United States, he said, needs to "bring in NATO, bring in other folks and give up some authority. We act like Iraq is some kind of prize that we won."
| Or maybe that we're afraid the International Community™ will hose it, like they usually do... |
Speaking Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Americans should view the deadly downing of the Army helicopter as the tragic but inevitable cost of waging a long war. "In a long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days, as this is," he told ABC’s "This Week.""But they’re necessary. They’re part of a war that’s difficult and complicated."
| Counterpoint: Inject Rumsfeld's realism. Then move on to: |
But Democratic presidential hopefuls seized on the downing of the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter to press the administration to justify the mounting American death toll and to explain its strategy for getting out of Iraq. "We were misled into this conflict without a real strategy for success," former NATO commander Wesley Clark told The Associated Press.
| "Hey! Lookit me! I'm hysterical!" |
Two other candidates, Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sen. John Edwards, said the United States needs more international help to make Iraq safe.
| "This is a job for... Kofi!" |
"We cannot solve this problem alone," Gephardt said on CBS’"Face the Nation." He urged Bush to sit down with foreign leaders, "treat them with respect and ... get the help that we should get from our friends."
| Unlike the help we've gotten from... ummm... Britain and Poland and Albania and Mongolia and Denmark and... |
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the only candidate who voted against the congressional resolution authorizing the war in Iraq, said in a statement: "This disastrous mission must be ended before any more lives are lost. ... It is time to bring our troops home."
| "We can ring them around Washington, and we'll protect the capital, by gum!" |
The strike occurred as an ABC News-Washington Post poll, for the first time, found that a majority of people surveyed - 51 percent - now disapprove of the way Bush is handling postwar Iraq. |