Bush Team Casts Foes as Defeatist

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by MSNBC.com

Blunt rhetoric signals a new thrust

By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:55 p.m. ET Aug. 30, 2006

President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut off funding for troops on the battlefield, charges that many Democrats say distort their stated positions.

With an appearance before the American Legion in Salt Lake City today, Bush will begin a series of speeches over 20 days centered around the coming fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But he and his top lieutenants have foreshadowed in recent days the thrust of the effort to put Democrats on the defensive with rhetoric that has further inflamed an already emotional debate.

Bush said last week that Democrats are promising voters to block additional money for continuing the war. Vice President Cheney this week said critics "claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone." And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, citing passivity toward Nazi Germany before World War II, said that "many have still not learned history's lessons" and "believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased."

Pressed to support these allegations, the White House yesterday could cite no major Democrat who has proposed cutting off funds or suggested that withdrawing from Iraq would persuade terrorists to leave Americans alone. But White House and Republican officials said those are logical interpretations of the most common Democratic position favoring a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

"A lot of the people who say we need to withdraw from Iraq say we'll be safer, and I don't think that's accurate," said Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a key architect of the party's strategy heading into the fall congressional campaign. Mehlman noted that Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals have said they want to drive Americans out of Iraq and use it as a base. "We ought to not ignore when they say they're going to do that."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it is reasonable for Bush to presume that Democrats will try to cut off funding for the war if they take over Congress, noting that 54 House Democrats voted against a spending bill for military operations last year. "How would they force the president to withdraw troops?" she asked. "Yell?"

Democratic dissent
Democrats contended that the statements went too far. "Maybe there are some people in America who do not want to fight the war on terror, but I do not know them," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said yesterday. "We Democrats want to fight a very strong war on terror. No one has talked about appeasement."

The White House strategy of equating Democratic dissent with defeatism worked during the 2002 and 2004 elections, but it could prove more difficult this time. Some Republicans, such as Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.), line up with Democrats in seeking a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq. When Bush and his allies accuse those favoring such a timetable of "self-defeating pessimism," as Cheney put it this week, they risk spraying friendly fire on some of their own candidates.

In an interview yesterday, Shays said the charges by Cheney and Rumsfeld are "over the top" and unhelpful. "The president should be trying to bring the country together and not trying to divide us," he said. Shays, a longtime supporter of the war who just returned from his 14th trip to Iraq and faces a tough reelection battle, said he plans to outline next month a deadline for replacing U.S. troops doing police-style patrols with Iraqi forces. But he fears the Bush administration might not be supportive.

Other GOP incumbents, such as Reps. Gil Gutknecht (Minn.) and Michael G. Fitzpatrick (Pa.), are also raising serious concerns about Bush's Iraq policy.

CONTINUED


...There's defeatist and there's defeated...