President Bush accomplished his goal of calling for unity while portraying the fight ahead of the United States during his Monday night Oval Office address, the White House said yesterday, as it fended off charges that the president politicized the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
“The president did not want to try to turn this into a Democrats-versus-the-Republicans thing, but you cannot talk about the war on terror without talking about Iraq,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said yesterday.
“And furthermore, you can’t talk about September 11th, especially when Osama bin Laden himself says Iraq is at the center of all this, without mentioning it.”
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Bush’s speech stiffened the spines of Republicans who have grown weary of defending an unpopular war heading into a tight election season. Yesterday, they were back to skewering Democrats as harshly as ever.
“I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people,” House Majority Leader John A. Boehner said yesterday.
In particular, he noted Democratic objections — shared by a handful of Republicans — to the Bush administration’s handling of terrorism suspects held at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. Bush on Monday night called for unity behind the war on terror and defended Iraq as a central part of that war in a prime-time address from the Oval Office, televised by the major networks.
Almost immediately, Democrats slammed Mr. Bush, with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts saying the president should “be ashamed” and the chairman of both House and Senate Democrats’ political campaign committees accusing him of doing a disservice to the day. They objected to his defense of the war in Iraq and said he was wrong to tie it into the terrorist attacks from five years ago.
“To try to make partisan gain out of such tragedy dishonors all those we lost on September 11,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said yesterday, calling the speech an attempt “to distract from his failures in Iraq.”
The fight is playing out on Capitol Hill, where the House is considering a resolution commemorating the five-year mark since the attacks.
Mr. Boehner blasted Democrats for refusing to accept what in past years has been a noncontroversial resolution because it contains references to eight pieces of legislation that Congress has approved in the past five years in an effort to combat terrorism.
“What is being objected to is a list of the bills that Congress passed in response to 9/11,” Mr. Boehner said yesterday. “All of the bills passed with broad bipartisan support. It is a fact that they passed. And I, for the life of me, I have no idea what the objection is.”
Three of the bills mentioned in the draft resolution passed almost unanimously, and two others passed with support from most Democrats. The most partisanvote was last year’s immigration legislation, which picked up support from 36 Democrats in the House.
“We’re going to expose how weak the Democrats’ rhetoric and record is on national security. The Democratic leader wants to give up on catching terrorists, provide classified information to terrorist suspects and cut and run from Iraq,” said Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican.
“They wouldn’t even agree to include the national-security record of Congress in the 9/11 resolution.”
At the White House, Mr. Snow would not comment directly on Mr. Boehner’s statement on the Democrats’ priorities, but said he did not think Democrats were more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting Americans.
Mr. Snow walked reporters through parts of Mr. Bush’s speech and said there were “three or four sentences” that could be seen as controversial, but said Mr. Bush would have been criticized if he had left Iraq out.
• Christina Bellantoni contributed to this article.
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