Pelosi calls Iraq a 'failure'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”


The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

Pelosi’s harsh verdict is a reminder of the dilemma for Democrats as they head into this fall’s presidential and congressional elections:

They need to make the case that the country needs to depart from the direction set by Bush. Yet they don’t want to look like naysayers at a time when Iraq has become more stable, albeit still violent.

Republican strategists say one of their few chances to avoid a blowout in November is to paint Democrats as defeatists.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sparked a furious response from the right last year when he said the Iraq war “is lost.”

Bush announced in September that the surge policy of additional troops would allow a gradual reduction in forces as a “return on success.” Improvements in Iraq helped revive the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), now the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Shortly after Pelosi spoke on Sunday with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Iraq, a suicide bomber killed more than 20 civilians at a checkpoint north of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported.

Pelosi’s comment came during a discussion of her call for “the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq.”

Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked: “Are you not worried, though, that all the gains that have been achieved over the past year might be lost?”

“There haven't been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure. The troops have succeeded, God bless them. We owe them the greatest debt of gratitude for their sacrifice, their patriotism, and for their courage and to their families as well.

“But they deserve better than the policy of a war without end, a war that could be 20 years or longer. And Secretary Gates just testified in the last 24 hours to Congress that this next year in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to cost $170 billion.

“Afghanistan is not settled because the president took his eye off the ball and took the full attention that should have been in Afghanistan, and shifted some of that to Iraq, a war without end, without a plan, without a reason to go in, without a plan to win, without a strategy to leave. This is a disaster … we cannot perpetuate.”

On other issues, the speaker said a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket would produce great enthusiasm, but she declined to take the bait on whether she would like such a so-called dream ticket to emerge.

“The decision as to who is the running mate of the nominee of the party is the decision of the nominee of the party,” Pelosi said. “If someone would ask my advice in that capacity, however great you are, Wolf, in that capacity as nominee I might have a suggestion. But right now, let the democracy continue and see how this plays out. And there are a lot of people who would be very enthusiastic about it. I'll agree with you on that.”