6.20.2005
Republican Senators Challenge Bush's Irag Optimism (Reuters.com)
Sun Jun 19, 2005 03:09 PM ET
By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush needs to tell Americans the nation faces "a long, hard slog" in Iraq, a key Republican senator said on Sunday, and another said the White House was "disconnected from reality" in its optimism over the war.
"Too often we've been told and the American people have been told that we're at a turning point," Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "What the American people should have been told and should be told ... (is that) it's long; it's hard; it's tough."
"It's going to be at least a couple more years," said McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, was quoted by U.S. News and World Report as saying the administration's Iraq policy was failing.
"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," said Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
The two senators' remarks came as the Bush administration makes a push to counter growing U.S. public impatience with the Iraq war, and to resist demands by some lawmakers to set a date for withdrawal of U.S. forces.
U.S. public polls show the Iraq war is losing support and hurting Bush's popularity. While Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted the insurgency is in its "last throes," a suicide bombing in Baghdad on Sunday that killed at least 23 people underscored the unabated bloodshed.
(More ... Politics News Article | Reuters.com) ¶ 20:18
By Tim Ahmann
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush needs to tell Americans the nation faces "a long, hard slog" in Iraq, a key Republican senator said on Sunday, and another said the White House was "disconnected from reality" in its optimism over the war.
"Too often we've been told and the American people have been told that we're at a turning point," Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "What the American people should have been told and should be told ... (is that) it's long; it's hard; it's tough."
"It's going to be at least a couple more years," said McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, was quoted by U.S. News and World Report as saying the administration's Iraq policy was failing.
"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," said Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
The two senators' remarks came as the Bush administration makes a push to counter growing U.S. public impatience with the Iraq war, and to resist demands by some lawmakers to set a date for withdrawal of U.S. forces.
U.S. public polls show the Iraq war is losing support and hurting Bush's popularity. While Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted the insurgency is in its "last throes," a suicide bombing in Baghdad on Sunday that killed at least 23 people underscored the unabated bloodshed.
(More ... Politics News Article | Reuters.com) ¶ 20:18
