Bush Clueless, Begs Demos for Help on Iraq

[Doug]

Bush, Security Team Plan to Meet With Bipartisan Iraq Study Group on Setting New Course in War

WASHINGTON -- Responding to a humbling election, White House aides said Sunday that President Bush would welcome new ideas about the unpopular war in Iraq, even from Democrats he had branded as soft on terrorism.

As Bush planned to meet Monday with a key advisory group on the war, his advisers adopted a new tone, days after a dissatisfied public handed the White House a divided government.

"Full speed ahead" in Iraq, as Vice President Dick Cheney put it in the final days of the campaign, was replaced by repeated calls for a "fresh perspective" and an acknowledgment that "nobody can be happy" with the situation in Iraq.

"We clearly need a fresh approach," said Josh Bolten, Bush's chief of staff, making the rounds of morning talk shows.

See here.

[Betsy]

Hopefully this will be a big step in making the rest of the world realize Americans are not as bad and/or as stupid as they thought we were.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Nada - he's already recanted a bit. He wants an out that doesn't include leaving. What he really wants is to be able to shift the blame to us. (See, I tried to work with the Dems, but those gutless wonders just wanted to cut and run.) Anybody who believes this man's plea for "bipartisanship" should go back and look at what he means by that. Ted Kennedy got burned on the No Child Left Behind - W got his "bipartisan" approval, then pulled out everything Ted put in and underfunded it to boot. Many Dems are stuck in the position of "I voted for it before I voted against it" because of W's brand of bipartisanship - get the approval, publicize it, then remove everything that made it acceptible to the Dems before passing it.