George W. Bush got a lot wrong in his administration, but he certainly did figure out Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.
In his new memoir, Decision Points, the former president tells of a meeting he held in September 2006 with Mr. McConnell, then the Republican whip in the Senate. The occupation of Iraq was going horribly, American and Iraqi casualties were rising sharply, costs had mushroomed into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and Iraq was teetering on the brink of full-scale sectarian civil war. Mr. McConnell was concerned, and he gave the president his advice.
But why was he concerned? It wasn't because of bloodshed, destruction, a hemorrhaging budget or a slide toward disaster. He was fearful that the morass in Iraq would cause the Republican Party to take a beating in the approaching mid-term elections. And what was his advice? He urged the president to “bring some troops home from Iraq” to lessen the political risks, Mr. Bush writes.
This incident, which Sen. McConnell's office has not denied, shines brightly on the contemptible hypocrisy and obsessive partisanship that have come to mark the senator's time in office.
At the time that Sen. McConnell was privately advising Mr. Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was elsewhere excoriating congressional Democrats who had urged the same thing. “The Democrat
leadership finally agrees on something — unfortunately it's retreat,” Sen. McConnell had said in a statement on Sept. 5, 2006, about a Democratic letter to Mr. Bush appealing for cuts in troop levels. Sen. McConnell, who publicly was a stout defender of the war and Mr. Bush's conduct of the conflict, accused the Democrats of advocating a position that would endanger Americans and leave Iraqis at the mercy of al-Qaida.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101111/OPINION01/311110017/1016/ARCHIVES
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