PETALUMA, CA --  The following is Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s (D-Petaluma) statement in reaction to President Bush’s first in a series of speech on his “war plan” in Iraq.

“The good news, I suppose, is that nearly three years into the Iraq war, the President has seen fit to share with the American people his war plan.

“The bad news is that there is no there there.  This “National Strategy for Victory” is barely worth the paper it’s printed on.  It is essentially the same old warmed-over rhetoric that we’ve become accustomed to and frustrated with: The enemy is bad.  We are good.  We will never back down.  We will achieve total victory.

“To the extent that there are specifics, they are completely divorced from reality.  Taking control of Haifa Street in Baghdad does not make Iraqi forces self-sustaining.  Taking the battle to the enemy, as the President likes to put it, has not thwarted terrorism but instead made Iraq a hotbed of terrorism.  Iraqi democracy is anything but a certainty, and we are undermining our own stated goal of advancing freedom when we torture prisoners and spend millions to spread propaganda in the Iraqi press.

“President Bush fails to recognize the intensity of people’s anxiety about the war.  Americans aren’t looking for the Administration to do the same thing just a little bit better, and to put it in a glossy booklet.  They want to see a fundamental shift in direction.  Like the plan outlined in a letter I wrote to the President, which was co-signed by 61 other House members: bring our troops home; engage in greater multilateral cooperation with our allies; pursue diplomatic/non-military initiatives; and prepare for a robust post-conflict reconciliation process.

“Come out of your bubble, Mr. President.  Break away from your handlers and listen to the American people.  Wake up to a nation that has sacrificed more than 2,100 of its finest people and can’t figure out why.  Listen to the people you claim to be helping: Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite leaders, who together can agree on practically nothing, have united behind a call for a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable.

“The President wants to have it both ways.  He won’t change his underlying approach, an open-ended military commitment that will last as long as he deems it appropriate.  But he can read the polls, so he wants to be perceived as doing something new and different, in order to rescue his Administration from political oblivion.

“But repackaging a Twinkie doesn’t improve its nutritional value.  And the same goes for the Bush Iraq policy.”