{"id":8150,"date":"2006-08-08T14:20:35","date_gmt":"2006-08-08T18:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8150.html"},"modified":"2006-08-08T14:20:35","modified_gmt":"2006-08-08T18:20:35","slug":"candor-is-not-a-sign-of-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/candor-is-not-a-sign-of-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Candor is not a sign of weakness’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) is a close political ally on the president, and right now he has some advice for Bush<\/a>: admit that mistakes have plagued the post-invasion occupation of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Rep. Howard Coble, a close ally of President Bush, said the White House should admit that U.S. mistakes have plagued the post-invasion occupation of Iraq.<\/p>\n

“Candor is not a sign of weakness,” the 11-term Republican from Greensboro said Monday. “People in my district who stood in line to vote for President Bush aren’t happy about Iraq.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With all due respect to Coble, if he believes that Bush might agree that candor is not a sign of weakness, then he just hasn’t been paying much attention lately.<\/p>\n

Regardless, when conservative Republicans from “red” states start complaining about voters’ discontent back home, it leads one to wonder if the official GOP 2006 strategy<\/a> — all national security, all the time — is the right idea.<\/p>\n

It’s worth adding, by the way, that Coble’s approach to the war has cut against the Republican grain for a while now.
\n
\nFrom way back in January 2005<\/a>:<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican and close ally of President Bush, says the United States should consider pulling out of war-ravaged Iraq.<\/p>\n

Coble is one of the first members of Congress to suggest a withdrawal publicly.<\/p>\n

The 10-term congressman said in an interview with the News & Record of Greensboro that he’s “fed up with picking up the newspaper and reading that we’ve lost another five or 10 of our young men and women in Iraq.”<\/p>\n

Support among Coble’s 6th District constituents has also waned, his office said.<\/p>\n

The dean of the state’s congressional delegation said he arrived at his position only after many months of searching in vain for evidence that the Bush administration had a post-invasion strategy to deal with the transition to Iraqi self-government.<\/p>\n

Coble, who has represented the 6th District since 1984, says he voted to give Bush sweeping war-making powers assuming the administration had a post-invasion strategy.<\/p>\n

“If there was, I wish someone would tell me what it is or show it to me,” he said. “I’d like to see it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coble added that the U.S. had to consider a troop withdrawal if the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to “shoulder more of the heavy lifting” for its own security.<\/p>\n

That was 20 months ago. I think Coble may have been onto something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) is a close political ally on the president, and right now he has some advice for Bush: admit that mistakes have plagued the post-invasion occupation of Iraq. Rep. Howard Coble, a close ally of President Bush, said the White House should admit that U.S. mistakes have plagued the post-invasion occupation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}