Battle Joined:Party of FDR and Truman are today 'cut-and-run' obstructionists
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press, 9/28/06
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — President Bush suggested today that Democrats don't have the stomach to fight the war on terror, as he battled back in the current election-season clamor.
"Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing," Bush said at a Republican fundraiser.
"The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run," Bush told a convention-center audience of over 2,000 people.
Democrats immediately disputed the charge that they would hold back in the anti-terror battle.
Karen Finney, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said "Democrats will be tough and smart, and will actually fight the terrorists, not leave them to plan future attacks."
Bush's no-holds-barred speech, one of his harshest yet on the campaign trail, came less than six weeks before midterm elections in which Democrats are seeking to strip Republicans of their control of one or both houses of Congress.
The war of words continued a nearly weeklong tussle by both parties.
Democrats continued to point to four pages of a thirty page intelligence report to argue that the 2003 Iraq invasion, by fanning anti-U.S. sentiments and helping terrorists recruit, is one reason to change leadership in Congress.
Today, Bush accused the opposition party of cherrypicking pieces of the report "for partisan political gain" and "to mislead the American people and justify their policy of withdrawal from Iraq."
"The greatest danger is not that America's presence in the war in Iraq is drawing new recruits to the terrorist cause," Bush said. "The greatest danger is that an American withdrawal from Iraq would embolden the terrorists and help them find new recruits to carry out even more destructive attacks."
Though not by name, he quoted Rep. Jane Harman of California, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, as saying that because of the Iraq war "it may become more likely" that the U.S. will have to contend with terrorists on its own soil again.
"Some in Washington, some decent people, patriotic people, feel like we should not be on the offensive in this war on terror," the president said.
The president also criticized House Democrats, including their leadership, who voted this week against a White House plan for interrogating, detaining and trying terrorists. "We must give our professionals the tools they need to protect the American people in this war on terror and those in the House of Representatives were wrong to vote against this bill," he said.
Democrats say the legislation would give the president too much latitude when deciding whether aggressive interrogations to save American lives cross the line and violate international standards of prisoner treatment.
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