US President George W. Bush late Wednesday renewed his campaign-season attacks on Democrats who he said "still call for retreat" in Iraq despite signs of success following the US troop surge there. Even before the 30,000 additional American soldiers were sent to Iraq in 2007, the Democrats declared the initiative a failure, Bush said.
"And now that the surge has turned the situation around, they still call for retreat," the president said at a fundraising dinner for Republican presumptive nominee John McCain and other Republicans running for seats in the US Congress.
"They want to retreat from Iraq and hope nothing bad happens. But wishful thinking is no way to fight a war and to protect the American people."
Although Bush did not mention him by name, he clearly took a shot at Barack Obama, the Democratic presumptive nominee whom Republicans have painted as soft on terrorism.
"In a time of war we need a president who understands that we must defeat the enemy overseas so we do not have to face them here at home, and that man is John McCain," Bush said.
Obama is opposed to the war in Iraq, which he has labeled a diplomatic and financial disaster, and has vowed to begin withdrawing troops from the ravaged country immediately if elected.
McCain, a Bush rival for the presidency in 2000, is getting the president's support, but the two men have rarely appeared in public together as Bush's approval ratings hover around record lows.
