NYT: Bush Backs Away From 2 Key Ideas of Panel on Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

Bush Backs Away From 2 Key Ideas of Panel on Iraq
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and KATE ZERNIKE
Published: December 8, 2006

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — President Bush moved quickly to distance himself on Thursday from the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, even as the panel’s co-chairmen opened an intensive lobbying effort on Capitol Hill to press Mr. Bush to adopt their report wholesale.

One day after the study group rattled Washington with its bleak assessment of conditions in Iraq, its Republican co-chairman, James A. Baker III, said the White House must not treat the report “like a fruit salad,” while the Democratic co-chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, called on Congress to abandon its “extremely timid” approach to overseeing the war.

But Mr. Bush, making his first extended comments on the study, seemed to push back against two of its most fundamental recommendations: pulling back American combat brigades from Iraq over the next 15 months, and engaging in direct talks with Iran and Syria. He said he needed to be “flexible and realistic” in making decisions about troop movements, and he set conditions for talks with Iran and Syria that neither country was likely to accept.

The president addressed reporters after meeting in the White House with his closest ally in the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. In light of the report’s stark warning that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating,” Mr. Bush came close to acknowledging mistakes. “You wanted frankness — I thought we would succeed quicker than we did,” the president said to a British reporter who asked for candor. “And I am disappointed by the pace of success.”

But Mr. Bush, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Blair, continued to talk about the war in the kind of sweeping, ideological terms the Iraq Study Group avoided in its report. While the commission settled on stability as a realistic American goal for Iraq, Mr. Bush cast the conflict as part of a broader struggle between good and evil, totalitarianism and democracy....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/world/middleeast/08prexy.html

[fishnfla]

1. Bush is too much of a pussy to talk to Syria and Iran

someone needs to remind him what that red phone in the oval office was for during the cold war

ED to add: he aint gonna do shit, is he? "Pace of the success" my butt." good and evil", quick somebody call batman! No wonder his aide said Baker could go back to his day job.

I blame Newsweek, once they had that cover story of the old man riding in to save the day, pissypants got his dander up....he's gonna dog-and-pony this report

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. “And I am disappointed by the pace of success.” He probably

said this a lot as he bankrupted the companies he ran.

[truthisfreedom]

5. and destroyed the lives of the stockholders. the world's 2 biggest prancing preening narcissists.

vile.

[Stargazer99]

3. I think it is time for the citizens of the US to tell Bush

the way it is going to be....we are the deciders, we are the citizenship!

[MisterP]

4. "08prexy.html"? HAHAHAHA

right outta The Sheep Look Up!

[Voltaire99]

6. Great opportunity for Congress to stop funding the war.

Just cite the study group's findings and pull the plug.

Sadly, nothing of the sort will happen. This bipartisan imperial war is here to stay, until we can't afford to fight it any longer. The good news: that time may not be long off.