Bush Criticizes Dean for Iraq War Remarks

President Bush and other Republican leaders criticized Howard Dean, the Democratic Party chairman, Tuesday for suggesting in a radio interview that the United States could not win the war in Iraq.

“The idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong,” Dean told San Antonio radio station WOAI-AM on Monday. He drew a parallel to Vietnam, saying officials had said victory in that war would come in “just another year, just stay the course ... and it cost us 25,000 brave American soldiers in Vietnam, and I don’t want to go down that road again.”

Bush, who is trying to revive public support for the Iraq war, was asked about Dean’s comments after meeting with Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization.

“Oh, there’s pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points,” the president replied. “Our troops need to know that the American people stand with them, and we have a strategy for victory.”

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also weighed in, saying Dean had “made it clear the Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender.”

And Ken Mehlman, the Republican Party chairman, told the San Antonio radio station Tuesday: “I can’t remember any time in history where the leader of a national party, one of our two national parties, predicted that America would lose a war we were engaged in. I think it sends the wrong message to our troops, the wrong message to the enemy, the wrong message to the Iraqi people.”

Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, said that Dean’s comments had been taken out of context. She pointed to comments elsewhere in the interview in which Dean said it was Bush’s “permanent commitment to a failed strategy” that was doomed to fail.

The debate over the course of the war has intensified in recent weeks, particularly after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a longtime hawk, called for a troop withdrawal from Iraq. “When you fight an insurgency, you have to win the hearts and minds of the [Iraqi] people, and we’ve lost the hearts and minds of the people,” Murtha said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show.

The Bush administration has begun aggressively promoting the president’s war strategy. Bush delivered a major address on the war last week at the U.S. Naval Academy and is scheduled to give a speech today, focusing on efforts to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure and economy.

Also Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated the administration’s determination to resist a hasty withdrawal of troops. In an address at Ft. Drum, N.Y., to several thousand troops newly returned from the war, he said that it would be “unwise in the extreme” to leave prematurely.

“To leave that country before the job is done would be to hand Iraq over to car bombers and assassins,” Cheney said. “That nation would return to the rule of tyrants and become a massive source of instability in the Middle East.”