Maybe he should have done this BEFORE the war---
EX-U.S. Secretaries, Bush to Discuss Iraq By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 42 minutes ago
President Bush is pressing ahead with a public relations offensive on Iraq, bringing a bipartisan group of former secretaries of defense and state to the White House for give-and-take on the unpopular military mission.
Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, were joining the president Thursday to give a detailed briefing on Iraq to more than a dozen foreign policy leaders from previous administrations.
The hope was that the prominent figures would be persuaded by the Bush administration's argument that it has "a clear plan in place for victory in Iraq" and spread the word, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
Still, the White House has been criticized for taking in too few outside opinions, so the session wasn't designed for administration officials to do all the talking. The meeting in the White House's Roosevelt Room, also being attended by current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was intended to draw input from their predecessors — some of whom have publicly disagreed with Bush, McClellan said.
"It's part of our effort to broaden our outreach," he said. "This is an opportunity to hear from key members of previous administrations — Democrats and Republicans alike."
The unusual gathering follows a month in which Bush put on an aggressive defense of his Iraq policy. The White House hosted similar briefings to several groups of members of Congress, including Democrats sympathetic to Bush's approach in Iraq.
The president also delivered a series of high-profile speeches, including one delivered from the Oval Office in prime time, in which he offered the public a more candid assessment of the situation in Iraq and acknowledged some early missteps.
As the year drew to a close, Bush saw his record-low poll numbers begin to rebound slightly.
Among those on the White House's confirmed list of attendees for Thursday were several former Clinton administration officials: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretaries William Cohen and William Perry. Perry helped develop Sen. John Kerry's foreign policy positions during the Massachusetts Democrat's campaign against Bush last year.
The others from previous Democratic administrations were Harold Brown, defense secretary under former President Carter, and Robert McNamara, the Vietnam-era Pentagon chief under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
Those from Republican administrations were Colin Powell, Rice's predecessor under Bush; former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig and George Shultz; and former Defense Secretaries Frank Carlucci, James Schlesinger and Melvin Laird. |
