GOP senators increasingly demanding changes to war strategy

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: Wed July 11, 2007
GOP senators increasingly demanding changes to war strategy


From left, GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander, Robert Bennett and Pete Domenici are calling for a new war strategy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There were fresh signs Wednesday that some Republican senators are impatient with the White House plan for Iraq and are demanding that the president change his war strategy now.

After emerging from an hourlong private meeting in the Capitol in which they had a "vigorous" exchange with National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, several senators said they urged the president to begin planning now for a repositioning of U.S. involvement in Iraq after the American commander there, Gen. David Petraeus, releases a progress report in September.

Bush said Tuesday he would not alter his current war plan until after September, when his top U.S. general in Iraq is scheduled to reveal whether the current troop "surge" is working.

But the president is fighting a tide of dissent among lawmakers in his own party, while Bush and the war itself rank low in national opinion polls.

Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who is up for re-election in 2008 and is facing tough criticism for his continued support of the Iraq war, said after the meeting with Hadley that "I don't think any votes or minds were changed in there."...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/11/us.iraq/index.html