McConnell: Bush Needs Credit for Iraq
Politico reports:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stopped just sort of calling President Barack Obama a hypocrite on Iraq and says Obama should be giving credit to former President George W. Bush for the war's successes.
Obama — a vocal critic in the Senate and on the campaign trail of the Iraq troop surge — plans to highlight its success in his second speech from the Oval Office. But McConnell, in a speech in Lexington, Ky., planned to say that credit should be given to "another president," George W. Bush, who had the "determination and will to carry out the plan that made [this] announcement possible."
"It sure makes things easier when you reject your own campaign rhetoric about how the surge — the Petraeus plan — shouldn't happen and wouldn't work," McConnell said at the Commerce Lexington Public Policy Luncheon. "[And] it makes it easier to talk about fulfilling a campaign promise to wind down our operations in Iraq when the previous administration signs the security agreement with Iraq to end our overall presence there."
"You might recall that the surge wasn't very popular when it was announced. You might also recall that one of its biggest critics was the current president."
With his remarks Tuesday, McConnell joined other leading Republicans, including 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain and House Minority Leader John Boehner, in praising Bush while calling into question Obama's foreign policy vision.
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