Maybe it was all a dog & pony show, but this seems like a first for this president. Its a welcome situation, I hope he was honestly listening to others this time.
Bush reaches beyond inner circle on Iraq policy
By Tabassum Zakaria 51 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
"Not everybody around this table agreed with my decision to go into Iraq and I fully understand that," Bush said, adding that he had listened to their concerns and their suggestions about how to proceed. "I will take to heart the advice."
The group at a meeting with Bush, current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were briefed by Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador there.
"It's an opportunity for these key leaders of previous administrations to hear about our plan for victory and hear about the progress we're making directly from our civilian and military leaders on the ground," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
"This is part of our efforts to broaden the outreach," he told reporters.
Bush has been emphasizing progress in Iraq after the December elections to an American public that has shown increasing discontent with the war in which more than 2,100 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis have died.
Among those attending were Colin Powell, Bush's first secretary of state whose tenure was often marked by friction with the White House and the Pentagon on a range of foreign policy issues.
Since leaving the post, Powell has avoided publicly criticizing the president, but several of his aides have lashed out at Bush, Vice President D ick Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Also at the meeting were William Perry, defense secretary in the administration of President Bill Clinton who was an adviser to Bush's 2004 election opponent, Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
"Regardless of where they, some of these former officials in previous administrations, stand, I think there's a lot of area of common ground with them on how we move forward in terms of the political process and the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces," McClellan said.
"The president wants to hear what they have to say. This is part of consulting with others," he said.
Critics have called for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, but Bush has repeatedly said that he will not set a timetable and U.S. forces would not pull out until Iraqi forces can take over security.
"The main thrust of our success will be when the Iraqis are able to take the fight to the enemy that wants to stop their democracy and we're making darn good progress along those lines," Bush said.
Other former secretaries of state from both Republican and Democratic administrations who attended included Madeleine Albright, Lawrence Eagleburger, James Baker, George Shultz and Alexander Haig.
Former secretaries of defense included William Cohen, Frank Carlucci, James Schlesinger, Harold Brown, Melvin Laird and Robert McNamara.
McNamara, 89, served under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Although he was a key architect of early U.S. policy in Vietnam, he eventually became disillusioned with the war there.
