With 3 Iraq Reports To Come, Bush Plans Week Of Scrutiny

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
December 9, 2006
Pg. 9

By Jim Rutenberg and Carl Hulse
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — President Bush will take part in high-visibility deliberations on Iraq next week, making visits to the Pentagon and State Department as they take part in an administrationwide effort to chart a new course in the war.
Mr. Bush will also meet with a group of academic and policy experts about Iraq on Monday, officials said, and will hold a video teleconference with senior military commanders.
The flurry of conspicuous consultation, officials said, is part of Mr. Bush’s effort to come up with a new approach in Iraq under intense pressure to bring the violence there under control or begin reducing the United States’ military commitment.
Officials said it was uncertain when the president would present to the nation what he has repeatedly called “a new way forward” in Iraq, though, they said, he still hoped to do so by Christmas.
The White House announced the series of meetings as it continued to face questions about how it planned to address 79 recommendations for Iraq proposed by the Iraq Study Group, whose bipartisan report included a grim analysis of the president’s approach to the war.
Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Bush was still awaiting results of three major reviews on Iraq policy from within the administration before announcing his plans — one at the State Department, one at the Department of Defense and one at the National Security Council.
Addressing growing anticipation in Washington for the president’s new Iraq policy, Mr. Snow warned reporters on Friday, “What you look for may not be splashiness or boldness, as you may call it, but what you look for is a serious proposal that addresses the real concerns of many Americans about, are we pursuing victory, and if so, how?”
After a meeting with Mr. Bush on Friday, several Democratic leaders said they remained skeptical that he was ready to embrace a substantially different approach.
“Someone has to get the message to this man that there has to be significant changes,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the incoming Democratic majority leader. He said Mr. Bush, through his comments and demeanor at the session, indicated that he was not receptive to the report, which Mr. Reid said was not the work of “do-gooders” but was written by “Democrats and Republicans with wide-ranging experience.”
Mr. Reid’s top deputy in the Senate starting next year, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said Mr. Bush had compared himself in the meeting to President Truman at the start of the cold war. But Mr. Durbin noted that Truman was working with a broad range of NATO allies at the time while keeping negotiations open with the Soviet Union and others — a jab at the administration’s decision so far against including Syria and Iran in talks on Iraq.
Mr. Snow said Mr. Bush did indeed refer to Truman in his meeting with the Democrat, but, Mr. Snow said, “The president was really not trying to compare himself to Harry Truman so much as to talk about the duration and nature of the struggle.”
The administration has so far preferred to work with allies in the region like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, as Mr. Bush showed again Friday by speaking by telephone with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
After the meeting, attended by leaders of both parties, Mr. Bush pledged to continue to consult with Congress as “we fashion a new — a new way forward in Iraq.”
But Mr. Snow indicated later that in pledging bipartisanship Mr. Bush was only willing to go so far.
“What the president said clearly was that he intends to consult with Congress, and that he — the door is open,” Mr. Snow said.
“There’s a flip side to that question,” Mr. Snow added, “Which is whether those who say, ‘Mr. President, as commander in chief, we listen to you,’ bend to support him.”
Flexing their own muscles, Democratic leaders promised heightened scrutiny of a forthcoming request from the administration for as much as $150 billion in new emergency spending for the war. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have generally approved the administration’s previous requests, though they enforced some changes.
Given the increasing number of employees working for private contractors in Iraq and the federal money flowing to Halliburton, a company Mr. Reid described as the “poster child for what is bad about this war,” Mr. Reid said the new Congress would not simply sign off on the request.
 
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