Nancy Spewlosi On Bush Speech

Some days -- those days that Pelosi or Boxer or Walters open their mouths -- it's hard to admit being a Californian. Here's our esteemed Congresswoman from Marin on President Bush's speech yesterday at Anapolis:

“What we heard today was a commitment to the status quo – a status quo that is not working.

Scroll down to the story about Jimmy Jaye Wells below. It's not a status quo, and it is working.

“The ‘Plan for Victory’ backdrop against which the President appeared at the Naval Academy today was no more accurate than the ‘Mission Accomplished’ backdrop he used over two and a half years ago on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

“The President did not have a plan for victory when he went into his war of choice in Iraq, and he did not have a plan for victory today.

Perhaps she missed it. It was released yesterday, all 30-some pages of it.

“The American people expected that the President would do more today than just put a new cover and 35 pages of rhetoric on old sound bites. What the American people wanted from the President today was some evidence that he has heard their concerns.

Oh, she did get it. She just chose not to believe it because it's good stuff and she can't handle the good stuff.

“Clearly, the President fails to understand that a new course is needed in Iraq. The President has dug us into a deep hole in Iraq; it is time for him to stop digging.

“He offered a status quo plan that would not accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces, would not motivate Iraqis to assume security responsibilities more quickly and bring American troops home.

When the president says "stay the course," he doesn't mean keep doing the same tactics over and over again; he means be faithful to the mission of a free democracy in the Middle East, and change the tactics as needed to accomplish it. But that's too complex for Nance.

“Instead, he suggested that we send more troops and spend more money in Iraq. That is not what the American people want.

So the Dems were wrong all this time they were calling for more troops in Iraq? And by the way, Nance, the American people do want victory, not defeat.

“The President says that the security situation in Iraq is getting better. But just because the President says it, does not make it so.

“226 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in just the last three months. The Generals have told us that the presence of large numbers of U.S. forces in Iraq encourages the insurgents. The President provided no specifics on how, or when, the number of troops will be reduced.

“With more than 2,100 American soldiers killed, thousands more wounded grievously, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the President owes the American people more than he provided today.

Tragic as it is, that's about one-tenth the casualties the anti-war faction of the DNC predicted would occur just to topple Saddam. There are more IED explosions in Iraq now, but casualties are not increasing; in fact, they're beginning to drop. That's an indication that we are learning, adapting, winning.

“We should follow the lead of Congressman John Murtha, who has put forth a plan to make America safer, to make our military stronger, and to make Iraq more stable. That is what the American people and our troops deserve.”

Murtha's plan would destabilize Iraq, opening it as a center of terror. It would tell budding democracy movements throughout the Middle East not to bother because they can't count on America, and it would move the fight against terror out of Iraq and closer to our shores.

Nancy, to paraphrase what you just said of the president, "Just because Pelosi and Murtha said it does not make it so."

h/t RCP