freeSpeech: Bob Schieffer
At his news conference today, the President put it in the starkest terms.
He said the stakes in Iraq couldn't be higher. He said if "we leave before the job is done, the enemy's coming after us."
That's about the hardest sell he could make. But whether he is right or wrong, it is going to take a hard sell because most Americans simply do not agree. More than anything, today's news conference underlines the serious political problem that Iraq has become for Republicans as they go into the fall elections.
The CBS News poll out this week showed a majority of Americans believe we should not have gone to Iraq, that we should reduce troop levels or pull our troops out and that if we pulled all our troops out, the terrorist threat would not be affected one way or the other.
When President Johnson became bogged down in Vietnam and the military urged him to send in more troops, he turned to outside advisers — the wise men of the foreign policy establishment — trusted friends who were not afraid to tell him the truth.
It's time for this president to do the same thing. His advisers are good people, but the policy just isn't working. For sure, that is what a majority of Americans has concluded.
The President needs new eyes to look at all this and some new ideas. He knows what the people who work for him think. He needs to talk to some people who don't work for him.
Bob Schieffer is broadcast journalism's most experienced Washington reporter. He is CBS News' Chief Washington Correspondent and also serves as anchor and moderator of Face The Nation, CBS News' Sunday public affairs broadcast.
Schieffer served as interim anchor of The CBS Evening News from March 10, 2005 until Aug. 31, 2006. He will be a regular contributor to The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.