President says Democrats have no plan for Iraq

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, October 28, 2006

SELLERSBURG, Ind. – President Bush, campaigning aggressively ahead of the high-stakes Nov. 7 elections, said Saturday Democrats should not be trusted to control Congress because they have no idea how to win in Iraq.

“I want you to think about the Democrat plan for success. There isn’t one,” Bush told thousands of energized Republicans packed into a high school gymnasium. “They are in agreement on one thing – they will leave before the job is done, and we will not let them.”

To support his claim that Democrats are offering no clear alternative to his leadership on Iraq, the president noted some Democrats have urged an immediate pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, while others have advocated a specific date by which all American soldiers will come home or cutting off money for the war.

“Five years after September the 11th, too many Democrats still do not get it,” Bush said. “The best way to protect the homeland is to find the enemy and defeat them overseas.”

The rally was aimed at boosting GOP Rep. Mike Sodrel, facing former Democratic Rep. Baron Hill for the third time in a rural southern Indiana district.

Before leaving Washington, the president spoke for 50 minutes with Iraq’s prime minister, seeking to ease recent tensions over a U.S. plan for benchmarks for reducing the violence.

Until the Indiana campaign stop, all of Bush’s approximately 90 political events in the 2005-2006 election season were fundraisers with donors willing to pay a high price to see him.

The rally was the president’s first free appearance and came in the final stretch of an election that will determine whether Republicans retain their majorities in the House and Senate.

The president has five more rallies scheduled so far through Thursday, in Texas, Montana and Nevada, and two in Georgia.

Later Saturday in South Carolina, Bush spoke to troops on a tarmac at Charleston Air Force Base, repeating his full-throated defense of his Iraq policy in a speech that was stripped of its earlier partisan jabs. But the appearance created potent images, as Bush, surrounded by troops in camouflage, strode into his audience’s view from between hulking C-17 cargo planes as soaring music blared.

“It’s a hard fight,” the president said of Iraq. “And we’ve got a lot of brave citizens of ours in the midst of the fight. But we have a plan for victory.”