Dean doubts U.S. win in Iraq

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has declared it "plain wrong" to think of achieving victory in Iraq, prompting President Bush, and some fellow Democrats, to flatly disagree.

"The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Mr. Dean said Monday on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.

His stark opinion came after the White House released a 30-page "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" last week and Republicans began accusing Democrats of becoming the "cut-and-run" party.

Mr. Dean likened the more than 2-year war in Iraq to the 10-year Vietnam War. He also compared the administration's faulty intelligence on stocks of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon.

Republicans rolled out some big guns to rebut Mr. Dean, including Mr. Bush.

"I know we're going to win, and our troops need to hear, not only are they supportive, but that we have got a strategy that will win," he told reporters at the White House. "Oh, there's pessimists, you know, and politicians who try to score points."

Mr. Dean called for an immediate pullout of all National Guard and Reserve troops and then a full "redeployment" of remaining troops to an unnamed Middle East country and to the fight in Afghanistan.

"The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem," Mr. Dean said.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman yesterday followed Mr. Dean to the WOAI microphone.

"It's fairly extraordinary," he said. "I can't remember any time in history where the leader of a national party, one of our two national parties, predicted that America would lose a war we were engaged in. I think it sends the wrong message to our troops."