Marcy Kaptur: “President Bush finds himself increasingly isolated on the issue of Iraq. Public support continues to evaporate. This…”

“President Bush finds himself increasingly isolated on the issue of Iraq. Public support continues to evaporate. This week in a devastating blow to the President's policy, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, a respected voice and, I might say, a very experienced voice on foreign policy for the past 30 years, publicly broke with the Bush administration on Iraq. In remarks on the Senate floor which are prominently featured on the home page of his Web site, Senator Lugar said: ``Our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world. The prospects that the current ``surge'' strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And the strident, polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East. Unless we recalibrate our strategy in Iraq to fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of U.S. national security, we risk foreign policy failures that could greatly diminish our influence across that region and the world.``”