January 14, 2007
The WH Iraq Campaign
The WH doesn't hype interviews of Bush or Cheney often, though since Tony Snow's arrival, the WH press shop has upped the amount of (virtual) paper they churn out. Still, even in the Snow era, the paper the WH puts out pales in comparison to the average member of the Hill leadership.
Here's what the WH is promoting from Cheney's interview on "Fox News Sunday," which was not quite as conciliatory as Pres. Bush's wed. night speech. It's worth noting what the WH is promoting because it is likely these statements and tone was the plan going into the interview.
Cheney on the Cong. Dems: "It’s not enough for them to be critics any more. We have these meetings with members of Congress and they agree we can’t fail. The consequences of failure would be too great. But then they end up critical of what we’re trying to do, advocating withdrawal or so-called redeployment of force, but they have absolutely nothing to offer in its place.”
Cheney on his perception of the Dem Iraq plan: "They basically, if we were to follow their guidance, the comments, for example, that a lot of them made during the last campaign about withdrawing U.S. forces, we simply go back and re-validate the strategy that Osama bin Laden has been following from day one, that if you kill enough Americans, you can force them to quit, that we don’t have the stomach for the fight. That’s not an answer. If, in fact, this is as critical as we all believe it is, then if the Democrats don’t like what we’re proposing, it seems to me they have an obligation to put forward their proposal, and so far we haven’t seen it.”
More Cheney, predicting a 40-year conflict, sort of: "The most dangerous blunder here would be if, in fact, we took all of that effort that has gone in to fighting the global war on terror and the great work that we have done in Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and across the globe out there, and saw it dissipated because the United States now decides that Iraq is too tough and we’re going to pack it in and go home. And we leave high and dry those millions of people in that part of the world that have signed on and supported U.S., or supported governments that allied with the U.S. in this global conflict. This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that’s going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have … the stomach for the fight long term.”
Posted at 05:06 PM
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