Newsweek: Bush Won't Consider Going After Iraq Until Afghan Terror Bases Are Eliminated
Cheney Tells Wolfowitz to Quiet Talk On Iraq; Biden Says No Officials Saying 'Go After Iraq' at the Moment
NEW YORK, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ --- President George W. Bush hasn't dismissed the idea of attacking Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein in the war on terror, but he won't consider it until the end of what his war cabinet calls Phase One -- eliminating Afghan terror bases, Newsweek reports in the current issue. Vice President Dick Cheney told the administration's top anti-Saddam militant -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz -- to pipe down, Newsweek has learned, and Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that officials who once touted to him the possibility of ``going after Iraq'' (including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice) aren't doing so at the moment, reports Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman.
(Photo: newscom.com )
While Bush builds the anti-terror coalition abroad, cooperation on the home front is fraying. When the Republican House leadership arrived at the White House to talk with Bush, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay warned the president that he was allying himself too closely with Democrats on an economic stimulus package, Newsweek reports. In the name of national unity, they said, he'd talked far too much about more spending -- and not enough about sweeping new tax cuts. He'd caved in, they complained, to the Democrats' demand that all airport-security workers join the federal payroll. In all, he was relying too heavily on expanding the power of government, an apostasy GOP fundamentalism could not abide. ``It was a bitter battle among Texans,'' a participant said later, Fineman reports in the October 15 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 8).
Democrats tend to think that the president has not yet begun to test the public's patience on military action. ``He's got plenty of time,'' Biden said. Republicans were more restive. ``The feeling up here is 'OK, we've made nice,''' said a source inside the GOP Hill leadership. ``Now it's time to attack somebody.''
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SOURCE: Newsweek |
