I told the President that “stay the course” wasn’t good enough; that we had to lean on the Iraqi leadership to make progress toward solving some underlying challenges and toward taking their country back. Two days later, the President spoke to the House Republican Conference. Afterwards, as he was leaving, he asked if I had noticed that he had changed from “stay the course” to “forward progress.”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. “I did notice.”
“Well, it was good advice,” he told me, “and I took it.”"
Bush switching from "stay the course" to "forward progress" is not a change in paradigm, or even a change in strategy. It's a change in slogan. It follows "honor the fallen", "stand down/up", "complete the mission", "fight them over there/here", whatever others I've forgotten, and my personal favorite, "bring it on". If wars were won with words, you and Bush would have conquered the entire Middle East by now. You sell cereal with words, Bob. You fight and win wars with 1) a set of militarily achievable strategic objectives and 2) the resources and tactics to achieve them. In that order. I look forward, after a fashion, to elaborating further on this with you and your friend over the next two years.
And should you actually be under any illusion otherwise, you are either with Bush or against him. You sign his checks or you do not. Talk does not matter.
Additionally, the other candidates have mentioned this in passing but I'd
like to put in writing in the context of this election the estimated 665,000
Iraqis who have been killed as a result of the US invasion of their country.
Holocaust with a capital "H" denial is perhaps the most egregious
sin in American politics, yet Bush by his words and you no less by your
silence deny a very real holocaust which even now continues, one which has
risen to an appreciable fraction of that which earned the Nazis such odium.
For shame.