Quite an assertion
Bill Sammon in the Examiner:
President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.
In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ” Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.” “Especially if it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his West Wing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”
To that end, the president has been sending advice, mostly through aides, aimed at preventing an abrupt withdrawal from Iraq in the event of a Democratic victory in November 2008. “It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”
Hopefully, the main assertion of the piece is really just about an author hawking books. But it’s really not all that unbelievable, given what this President has said to other authors.
September 25th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Au contraire, hopefully the main assertion is really an accurate depiction of the fact. It’s kind of like what, I believe, a certain Sgt. Esterhaus in Hill Street Blues used to say after roll call: I paraphrase, “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us”! That’s the war in Afgahinistan, Iraq, or where ever is next, in a nutshell. We can’t kill enough of them. We have been at war with this nonsense since before the advent of this Republic, and it’s going to be going on long past the lifespans of all of us. Get used to it.