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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Sunday, November 27, 2005

White House accuses Dems of stealing their Iraq Plan

Oh, this is just beautiful. Scott McClellan issued a statement thanking Joe Biden for stealing the White House's Iraq Plan. Biden had an oped in yesterday's WaPo outlining what seems to be the the majority opinion of Washington what to do and how to get out of Iraq.

Now, today, McClellan issues a "Setting the Record Straight" press release accusing Biden of stealing the White House plan for exiting Iraq. I think I speak for most Americans when I ask you, Mr. McClellan, what White House Plan are you talking about?

Show me a document were the White House outlines a plan.

After watching all the "major" speeches on Iraq and terrorism(yes, they're still trying to link them together) by Bush, I can say that the most detailed statements Bush has uttered on the topic are, "as the Iraqis stand up, we sill stand down," "we must stay the course, and trust in the democratic process," and "there will be no timetable for withdrawal."

This is not a plan. This is a collection of palliative statements designed to take the political heat off. Biden's editorial has the specific elements of a plan, some of which, overhauling the reconstruction programs, involving other nations both regionally and worldwide, a greater diplomatic presence, letting other countries assist in training troops, you left out of your record setting straight press brief because they indicate the level of ineptitude with which the Iraq policy has been run over the last two and a half years.

Maybe the White House should be actually focusing on Iraq rather than worrying about who is going to get credit.

And by the way, Mr. McClellan, when are you going to hold another press conference? The last one was almost three weeks ago on Nov. 9. Maybe if somebody at the White House had the job of making statements, explaining details, and answering questions we would know what the White House was proposing. Oh, that's right. That's your job.

(interestingly, a search of the whitehouse.gov site for "setting the record straight" press releases shows that McClellan started issuing these(Nov. 11), at least the one's recent enough to show up in a search, after he apparently decided to stop holding press conferences. This won't do. America deserves answers.)

UPDATE: Apparently Sen. John Warner (R - Va.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee hasn't seen a plan either.

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