Bush rejects calls for pullout

CLEVELAND – With his Iraq policies under attack from prominent members of his party, President Bush on Tuesday defiantly rejected calls to withdraw troops while Senate allies blocked the latest challenge to his strategy.

“I understand there’s a debate … But I believe that it’s in this nation’s interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations,” Bush said in a speech to business executives, in which he repeatedly defended his controversial 30,000-troop buildup. The “surge,” announced in January, reached full strength in mid-June.

“They just showed up,” Bush said. “And they’re now beginning operations in full. And in Washington you got people saying, `Stop.’ “

The president’s unwavering defense of his strategy came amid expectations that Republican restlessness on Capitol Hill and the lack of progress in Iraq might persuade Bush to express more openness to changing course.

In the past 2 1/2 weeks, five Senate Republicans, including longtime White House allies, have gone public with concerns about the surge and have urged the president to shift strategy.

Other GOP lawmakers who have been more openly critical of the Bush administration’s policies have expressed new willingness to join with congressional Democrats seeking to force an end to the war.

At the same time, administration officials openly concede that the Iraqi government has failed to make significant progress on a number of the goals outlined by Congress this spring to reduce sectarian strife.

But senior Bush administration officials mounted an intense campaign in recent days to implore Senate Republicans to give the current strategy two more months. The troop buildup is designed to quell violence in Baghdad and Anbar province and allow Iraqi leaders to reduce tensions between the country’s sectarian communities.

The administration deployed White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley and others to talk to GOP lawmakers.

Senate GOP leaders rallied Tuesday to block a Democratic proposal that would require the military to ensure troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan get more rest time at home before they are redeployed, a policy that would curtail the Pentagon’s ability to maintain current troop levels in Iraq.

The measure, sponsored by Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., both Vietnam War veterans, stalled when Republican leaders insisted that it reach a 60-vote supermajority to be included in the defense authorization bill.

Nearly 400 miles away in Ohio, the president defied his critics again, largely repeating the calls for patience he has been making for years and restating his conviction that a successful surge would eventually allow a partial withdrawal.

“I believe we can be in a different position in a while,” Bush said, “and that would be to have enough troops there to guard the territorial integrity of that country, enough troops there to make sure al-Qaida doesn’t gain safe haven from which to be able to launch further attacks against the United States of America, enough troops to be embedded and to help train the Iraqis to do their job.”

The president’s remarks drew sharp criticism from Democratic leaders.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a staunch war critic who has led his party’s efforts this year to force a withdrawal, said he was surprised Bush had not indicated any willingness to reconsider his strategy. “It seems that, rather than changing, he’s dug his heels in even more,” Reid said.

Citing the president’s pledge six months ago to hold the Iraqi government to a series of benchmarks, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., derided the president for showing “no intention of changing course, even as the Iraqis have failed to meet those benchmarks and have shown no ability to arrest the spiraling violence.”

House speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced late Tuesday that she planned to hold a vote later this week on legislation mandating that a troop withdrawal begin in 120 days and that it be completed by April 1.

Congressional Democrats appear to have the public on their side.

A new Gallup/USA Today poll released Tuesday showed record opposition to the war, with 71 percent of respondents saying they favored pulling out of Iraq by April 1. However, 55 percent also said they believed Congress should wait until the U.S. commander in Iraq delivered a full report Sept. 15 before making any decisions.

A group of moderate lawmakers is working on proposals that would not explicitly require a withdrawal but would transition U.S. troops out of their current mission of quelling sectarian violence.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who just returned from a trip to Iraq and is one of the leading defenders of the president’s strategy, criticized Democrats on Tuesday.

“Why do we have to keep taking up the Iraq issue when we know that in September there will be a major debate?” McCain said after delivering an impassioned indictment of the proposal to pull out of Iraq.