CounterPunch
June 15, 2005
"This is Not a Conservative War"
House Republicans vs. Bush
By JOSHUA FRANK
Things are not looking so hot for the Bush administration. The smell of "impeachment" is in the air. A couple of Democrats are finally making a stink over the Downing Street minutes and major news outlets have found the courage to run with the story. US misconduct at Gitmo has been exposed and confirmed by the Pentagon. Donny Rumsfeld himself admitted this past week that Iraq isn't any safer than it was before the fall of Saddam. And now prominent Republicans in the House of Representatives are calling Bush a neo-con and demanding him to end the war in Iraq, ASAP.
Yep, you read that last sentence correct. The first of the House Republicans to speak out on television against the "neo-con invasion" was Mr. "Freedom Fries" himself, North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones. As Jones told the news program, This Week, he now believes that neo-cons within the Republican Party are to blame for pushing an illegitimate war on Iraq.
Rep. Jones isn't the only Republican to publicly denounce the Iraq invasion. On Tuesday's "after hours" segment of The House, televised on CSPAN, Tennessee Republican Rep. John Duncan, along with Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas Republican, called on Bush "to order a phased and orderly withdrawal from Iraq."
Duncan went on to admit that the US "can't be a nation that seeks empire across the globe ... that seems to be what we are doing. Polls in Iraq show that a large majority of the Iraqi people view us as occupiers, not liberators. We should not be mouthing these thoughtless clichs like 'we can't cut and run."
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