Published: January 11, 2007 11:28 pm      

McConnell backing Bush plan

Republican minority leader says

Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called President George W. Bush’s decision to increase troop strength in Iraq “both courageous and correct.”

McConnell, speaking by conference call to reporters on Thursday, said he is convinced Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will support Bush’s efforts to stabilize and secure Iraq’s capital of Baghdad and won’t try to put Shiite neighborhoods off limits to Iraqi and American forces as his government has done in the past.

Kentucky’s senior senator also said former Republican U.S. Congresswoman Anne Northup of Louisville would be a formidable candidate in the 2007 gubernatorial election if she decides to run, but declined to say the same about incumbent Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher

“The goal in Iraq is to win,” McConnell said. Past tactics haven’t succeeded, he continued, and Bush conceded as much in a Wednesday night speech to the nation. Bush announced he would send another 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq with a primary mission of securing and stabilizing Baghdad. Key to that strategy, however, is the support of Miliki’s government and the Shiite majority in Iraq. Maliki is Shiite, the majority ethnic group in charge of the government but which was suppressed by the minority Sunnis during the government of Saddam Hussein.

“Maliki is the elected leader of the country, and we have to deal with the duly elected leader of the government,” McConnell said. Some question how enthusiastic Maliki supports Bush’s decision to increase troop strength.

But McConnell said he’d met three times in the past week with Bush who assured him of Miliki’s support.

“The president told us this was actually Maliki’s idea,” McConnell said.

He conceded the war is losing popular support and was the primary issue in the fall elections in which Democrats seized control of both houses of Congress. He said while some Republican congressmen have begun to waver in their support for the war, “the vast majority of our members (in the Senate) are willing to let the president execute this policy” which he said “is well worth trying.”

McConnell said “it’s difficult to ascertain” how long Bush has to make the new policy of securing Baghdad work before already weak popular and political support — both in the U.S. and in Iraq — erodes farther. Americans and Iraqis, however, want the same thing, McConnell said.

“What the American people and the Iraqis would like to see is success,” McConnell said. “That means clearing the capital city and that’s what this is about.”

When reporters asked about his reaction to news Northup might challenge Fletcher, McConnell said he won’t endorse anyone in the primary just as he declined to do in 2003 when Fletcher won. But that didn’t keep him from praising Northup.

“I would say Anne would be a formidable opponent and she would be a candidate who could win in May and in November.”

Asked if Fletcher could also win in May and November, McConnell said, “I think I’ve said about all I’m going to say.”