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Henry: Bush seeks parade from stampede

  • Story Highlights
  • Bush addresses the Iraq war at meeting on Tuesday
  • More Republicans break with the White House over the handling of the war
  • Bush puts best face on defections, while sticking with his message
  • Next Article in Politics »
By Ed Henry
CNN White House correspondent
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When you're facing a stampede, you try to jump ahead of the mob and call it a parade. That's what President Bush was trying to do at a town hall-style meeting Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio, -- put the best face on Republican defections over Iraq.

As an increasing number of Republican senators break with the president on the war and say they want large numbers of U.S. troops to start coming home, the president is essentially trying to say, "I'm for that too!"

The president repeated that he also wants to get the United States to start troop withdrawals, but that there first needs to be more progress in Iraq in two major areas. First, security on the ground needs to be improved and second, political adversaries need to find more common ground within the Iraqi government.

"I believe we can be in a different position in awhile, and that would be to have enough troops there to guard the territorial integrity of that country [Iraq], enough troops there to make sure that al Qaeda doesn't gain safe haven from which to be able to launch further attacks against the United States of America, enough troops to be embedded and to help train the Iraqis to do their job," Bush said. "In the meantime, the Iraqis have got to do more work."

"It's necessary work. I wouldn't ask a mother or a dad, I wouldn't put their son in harm's way if I didn't believe this was necessary for the security of the United States and peace of the world," Bush said.

This is not really a new policy or strategy, it's more like a new-and-improved way of framing the same message of patience. Video Watch how time could be a problem for Bush »

"The whole purpose of the surge is to get us to that place," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on CNN's "American Morning" Tuesday about reducing troop levels. "Now that you got ... a 'new way forward', give it a chance to work."

But the problem for the president is that many fellow Republicans are no longer willing to give it a chance to work, with moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine declaring that a troop redeployment should occur by the middle of next year.

"That should occur and send a very important message to the Iraqi government that our time, you know, has evaporated, along with our patience with respect to their failures to implement the political objectives," Snowe told "American Morning" on Tuesday.

"Our troops are making the military sacrifice and, yet, they're not willing to make the political compromises," she said.

In fact, the White House's own preliminary report on progress within the Iraqi government, due on Capitol Hill by the end of the week, is expected to show Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is not meeting key benchmarks.

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That's likely to be further grist for senior Republicans, like Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, to say the president can no longer wait until September for a drastic change in strategy.

In other words, the stampede is likely to grow. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

All About Iraq WarGeorge W. BushU.S. Congressional News

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