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Norton Says Bush Press Conference Revealed a President
But Not the People- in Denial on Iraq Civil War
August 22, 2006
Washington, DC--Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a sponsor of House Joint Resolution 73, the Murtha Resolution to redeploy U.S. forces from Iraq, today issued the following statement regarding President Bush's statements at a press conference on the Iraq War yesterday.
"On display at the Bush press conference yesterday was a President in a remarkable state of full and tragic denial about the civil war in Iraq. However, deniability has now come face to face with implausibility in the form of steady increases in indigenous sectarian violence, culminating last month in the most civilian deaths of the War and double the January toll (New York Times, 8/16/06). President Bush stands isolated from the American people, with 60% no longer supporting the Iraq War, including many Republicans and conservatives. ‘Our mission in Iraq has failed,' said conservative icon William Buckley. Nevertheless, at his press conference Tuesday, the President said, ‘We're not leaving so long as I'm the President.' Bush put the American people on notice that no sacrifice of American lives is too great in this war, even in an escalating civil war of another country. I could not agree, as I spoke at a ceremony last month sending to Iraq more D.C. National Guard members of the 529th Truck Company, who lost Army Specialist Darryl T. Dent, a Roosevelt High School graduate, in 2003. Another group of D.C. National Guard MPs is scheduled to go to Iraq in November. There is no longer even the pretense of a hand-off to Iraqi troops any time in the near future.
The President started painting himself into the corner in which he is now trapped when he rushed to war. The U.N. inspectors begged for more time to find the purported weapons of mass destruction and with inspectors in the country, Saddam Hussein could not have launched an attack while they continued to search. American honor and prestige, which Bush seeks now to salvage, was gravely injured when no WMDs were ever found. Now, Bush is unable to find a way out. Yesterday he told us he is not even trying.
Bush's entire foreign policy is trapped in a country whose current chaos began with our invasion. As a result, he has strengthened Iran, the most dangerous country in the region that believes it has no reason to fear American power, and tragically the president's destabilizing war policy has been a major contributor to an even more dangerous Middle East, where his administration for years has abandoned the honest broker role.
Bush is trapped in his own rigid mind set. For a president in denial, there is no way out. For our country, his policies have narrowed the choices to two-more American lives sacrificed in the face of failures, as in Vietnam, or a well-planned, disengagement and redeployment from Iraq."
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