Bush Plans To Stress Next Phase In Iraq War-GOP Dissent Spurs Change In Message but Not Course

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR2007070902031.html

Bush Plans To Stress Next Phase In Iraq War
GOP Dissent Spurs Change In Message but Not Course

By Peter Baker and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; Page A01

President Bush, facing a growing Republican revolt against his Iraq policy, has rejected calls to change course but will launch a campaign emphasizing his intent to draw down U.S. forces next year and move toward a more limited mission if security conditions improve, senior officials said yesterday.

Top administration officials have begun talking with key Senate Republicans to walk them through his view of the next phase in the war, beyond the troop increase he announced six months ago today. Bush plans to lay out what an aide called "his vision for the post-surge" starting in Cleveland today to assure the nation that he, too, wants to begin bringing troops home eventually.

The White House devised the political strategy after days of intense internal discussions about how to respond to several prominent Republican senators who have broken with Bush's war policy recently. Bush decided against heeding their proposal to begin redeploying U.S. troops as early as this summer, but he and his team concluded that he needed to shift his message to show that he shares the goals of his increasingly restless Republican caucus and the broader public.

"Look, the president understands the American people are frustrated," said a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging Bush. "We've been at this a long time. We've sacrificed some of our best and brightest. . . . But they want to see that we have a vision for success that will allow us to gradually downsize our role and reduce our footprint. The president needs to and wants to remind everybody that he shares that frustration."

To do that, Bush intends to argue that Congress and the public should look past this week's scheduled status report on Iraq and wait for the fuller assessment due in September. A drawdown, administration officials said, must be the result of the troop increase, not in place of it. "The drawdown is an effect," the official said. "It's not a cause."

Yet key Republican senators have indicated that they would not be satisfied with a change in political spin over a real change in strategy. In a speech on the Senate floor after a White House meeting yesterday, John W. Warner (R-Va.) set the tone, declaring this "a time in our history unlike any I have ever witnessed before." Warner recalled that Congress has voted to require Bush to demonstrate progress in Iraq or detail how he will alter his strategy, adding that he warned the White House to take it seriously.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070709_broken_promises_of_unity_from_the_divider_in_chief

Bush will be president until Jan. 20, 2009. Are we doomed to 18 months of drift? Instead of sounding like a Republican political consultant, Bush might try to sound like a president who understands that power in Washington—and opinion in the country—shifted after the 2006 elections.

"Stay the course"...oh that's right we've never been for "stay the course". As soon as they sign over their oil we will talk about downsizing a few US troops. We will however boost up the mercernary force...Can't understand why anyone would object to that. Come around March or April when election campaigns get rolling we will pull out twenty thousand or so and make a big deal out of it so Republicans can win the election and then "Surge" once more because we all know how well it works..

bu$h* will not allow this war to end.....he would have it's responsibility on his hands.

read all the stories....it ain't gonna end

though I think that was the NYT? The one that the WH denied hard. No change in course here - only changes of spin allowed.