"With all due respect, our president is wrong, and the new Congress will show him the way,” Reid said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.
Reid’s remarks set the stage for a week that will mark the apex of the confrontation between congressional Democrats and the president over Iraq. Democrats plan to send Bush legislation this week that begins phasing U.S. troops out of Iraq by Oct. 1 and sets a goal of complete U.S. withdrawal by April 1, 2008.
The lawmaker said the president “is the only person who fails to face this war's reality – and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours.”
“The military mission has long since been accomplished,” he added. “The failure has been political. It has been policy. It has been presidential.”
Reid’s speech came shortly after the president reiterated that he would veto the Democrats’ legislation.
“I will strongly reject an artificial timetable [for] withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office Monday.
“We may not be able to prevent President Bush from vetoing our supplemental bill, but we can and will keep trying to change his mind,” Reid said.
