Former Navy Secretary Webb: Democrats will provide Iraq remedy

The AP reported today that:

RICHMOND, Va. - The only remedy to a series ofIraq policy failures byPresident Bush is a Democratic takeover of Congress in the Nov. 7 election, Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb said Saturday.

The former Republican, who was President Reagan's Navy secretary, said in the Democrats' weekly radio address that Bush's "incompetence" in Iraq had undercut the fight against terrorism.

Webb is locked in a close race in Virginia against Republican Sen. George Allen that could determine whether the Senate remains in GOP control.

"Since 2003, President Bush has laid out nine different plans for victory in Iraq, none of them serious and none of them workable. And most seriously, this incompetence has hindered our ability to fight international terror," Webb said.

It marked the second time since July 1 that Webb, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, has given the Democrats' address. Both times, his focus has been Iraq.

Webb warned in a newspaper column in 2002, the year before Bush ordered the Iraq invasion, that a war there would destabilize the oil-rich Middle East and mire U.S. forces in a bloody and protracted conflict. As of Friday, 2,810 American troops had died in Iraq.

"It gives me no great pleasure today to be saying `I told you so,'" said Webb, whose son, Jimmy, is a Marine on active duty in Iraq. "It pains me as an American that our casualties are again escalating while this president and his followers are still incapable of bringing forward an intelligent, commonsense approach to ending our involvement there."

Webb cited Iraq and other Bush-backed policies among his reasons for leaving the GOP. Now, other Republicans are reaching the same conclusions he did about the war.

"Over the past several weeks a few realists in the Republican Party, such as (Virginia) Sen. John Warner and former Secretary of State Jim Baker, have begun to make their voices heard. They are moving away from the fantasy world of this administration, toward real solutions," Webb said.

The complete story may be found here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061028/ap_on_el_se/democrats_iraq