I despise this man.
He has no one to blame but himself and his own selfish actions.
GOP Unrest Dismissed As Sign of Election Year
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; Page A01
President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the war in Iraq is dominating nearly every aspect of his presidency, and he served notice for the first time that he expects the decision on when all U.S. troops come home to fall on his successors.
In an hour-long news conference, Bush said the "trauma" of war has left the public and even some lawmakers in his own party understandably shaken and skeptical of his vow that the United States will prevail.
| VIDEO | In his opening remarks at a Tuesday press conference, President Bush discusses the war in Iraq and the national economy. (AP) Online Politics Extras
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"Nobody likes war," Bush said. "It creates a sense of uncertainty in the country."
With a series of polls showing Bush and the war less popular than ever, he rejected calls to change the U.S. military strategy or shake up the White House staff and war cabinet. "I am happy with the people I surrounded myself with," he said. But Bush did not rule out bringing aboard a veteran Washington operative to help soothe relations with an increasingly restive Republican Congress, a move that aides said may happen soon.
"I'm not going to announce it right now," Bush said, noting that he has had conversations with congressional allies. "Look. They got some ideas that I like and some I don't like, put it that way."
Bush dismissed the rising chorus of Republican criticism as election-year jitters. "There's a certain unease as you head into an election year," he said.
The chief aim of the White House news conference, Bush's second this year, was to make his case again that Iraq is progressing toward a viable democracy despite daily images of car bombings and sectarian violence. It was part of a White House campaign to confront public anxieties about his leadership, the war and the future of his presidency, aides said. The offensive comes as a string of polls have shown that less than 40 percent of Americans approve of the Bush presidency and that a growing number no longer trust him.
"I understand people being disheartened when they turn on their TV screen," Bush said, adding that "nobody likes beheadings" and other grim images.
Bush said he disagrees with former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi, a man who had been handpicked by his administration, and others who say that the country is already engaged in a civil war in which dozens of people are killed each day. "The way I look at the situation," Bush said, "the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war." If a civil war erupts, he said, Iraqi forces will be in charge of ending it, with assistance from U.S. troops.
As the debate over whether a civil war is at hand has shown, Bush's optimistic assessments are often contradicted by Iraqi and other U.S. officials and sometimes by the conditions on the ground three years after the invasion. But Bush rejected the notion that his Iraq policy is based on wishful thinking. "I say that I am talking realistically to people," he said.
Moments later, he said the reason U.S. forces went to Iraq was to "make sure we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy." Since the invasion, Bush has emphasized different rationales for the Iraq invasion, such as the need to topple a dangerous dictator and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, which have yet to be found.
Bush said he would call home the 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq if he was not confident about his victory plan. U.S. commanders in Iraq will determine when troop levels can be lowered, he said, suggesting that some will remain beyond January 2009. Asked if a day will come when there are no U.S. troops there, Bush said "that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."
Throughout the news conference, Bush steered the conversation back to Iraq, including when he was asked why a growing number of Americans are telling pollsters that they no longer trust him. In a rarity for Bush, he even took a question from Helen Thomas, a liberal columnist and unabashed critic of Bush and the war who frequently accuses the White House of lying about the conflict. Thomas jokingly told Bush that he would "be sorry" for calling on her, then repeatedly tried to interrupt his response to her question about his shifting rationales for the war. "I really didn't regret it," he said. "I kind of semi-regretted it."
The news conference was vintage Bush, a mix of playful banter, stern glares and defiant assertions. He dismissed as "needless partisanship" calls by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) to censure the president for authorizing the secret National Security Agency spying program, which involves eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. Telegraphing the GOP's election plan to portray Democrats as weak on terrorism, Bush dared his opponents to campaign in the 2006 elections on a platform that includes eliminating the spying program.
"They ought to take their message to the people and say, 'Vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program,' " he said. Bush also taunted those Democrats who opposed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, the law that provides the government with broad surveillance powers: "If that's what the party believes, they ought to go around the country saying we shouldn't give the people on the front line of protecting us the tools necessary to do so." No Democrat has made such a statement.
With the stock market up and unemployment down, Bush repeatedly said the economy is strong, despite concerns about rising inflation. He blamed the federal debt, which has ballooned from $5.7 trillion when he took office to more than $8.2 trillion under his watch, on mandatory government spending for entitlement programs such as Medicare. He did not mention that his prescription drug plan for Medicare is projected to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt, or that federal spending has grown by more than 25 percent since he took office.
Bush said he remains committed to cutting the annual deficit in half by 2009. Still, a president who had promised big ideas and big changes on multiple fronts at the start of his second term 14 months ago suggested that this has now become essentially a one-issue presidency. In November 2004, he bragged about spending his political capital to restructure the Social Security system.
Yesterday, he said: "I'm spending that capital on the war." BASTARD.
What about the innocent people who's lives you have destroyed?
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