Ex-Hawk Spitzer Calls Iraq a Waste of Tax Dollars

Governor Spitzer, who formerly stood out among national Democrats as a forthright defender of the Iraq war, yesterday accused President Bush of wasting tax dollars on a “misplaced foreign policy endeavor,” money he said would be better spent on expanding public health care, education, national infrastructure, and the environment.The governor also suggested that he was skeptical of the report delivered yesterday by the top American military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, on military and political developments in Iraq.Mr. Spitzer said his view that the war is a failure wouldn’t be altered by the general’s testimony before Congress. Later in the afternoon, General Petraeus told lawmakers that the military objectives of Mr. Bush’s ordered “surge” troop increase are “in large measure being met.”Mr. Spitzer’s comments, made during a press conference at his New York City headquarters, represent a stark reversal of his hawkish opinion on the war in 2003, the year of the invasion.At the time, the then-state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate said removing Saddam Hussein from power was “just and necessary for world peace,” and he surprised the Democratic establishment by declaring that Howard Dean, a fellow Democrat, could not win the 2004 presidential election because of his opposition to the war. While Mr. Spitzer has subsequently attacked Mr. Bush’s handling of the war effort sharply and asserted in a recent speech that the “intervention in Iraq has failed,” he hadn’t previously said money spent on the war should be redirected to other national priorities.“Their priorities are fundamentally wrong, totally wrong,” Mr. Spitzer said. “And you have seen it in their unwillingness to fund No Child Left Behind … in their unwillingness to expand health care, their unwillingness to spend dollars on the environment, their unwillingness to spend dollars on the infrastructure of this nation, and then they wonder why we are falling behind economically.“What they are spending enormous sums of money on is a misplaced foreign policy endeavor that is not succeeding, despite what General Petraeus is going to testify to in the next few days, and we will of course listen with open ears and open minds as we must. But their priorities are wrong, and that is what the public has been saying to them for years.”Mr. Spitzer spoke to reporters after meeting with several members of New York’s congressional delegation to discuss efforts to roll back regulations issued by the Bush administration that have stymied the governor’s plan to expand public health care to tens of thousands more children in families with incomes above the poverty level.Later in the day, Mr. Spitzer and other elected officials toured the ground zero construction site with the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi of California, who paid her second visit to the area since the terrorist attacks six years ago today.In an interview, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a vocal early critic of the war who participated in yesterday’s tour, praised the governor’s position on Iraq. “I agree with him. I am a very strong opponent of the war,” he said.“It’s a mark of real leadership when someone … changes their position based on evidence, based on experience,” he said. “There are a lot of people who may have thought in 2003 that the war was a good idea and now know that it isn’t — who now know that the way it has been done has been terrible, and now think we ought to withdraw troops as rapidly as possible.”Asked if Mr. Spitzer supports a specific troop withdrawal plan, a spokeswoman for the governor, Christine Anderson, said via email: “Like millions of other Americans, the Governor reads the papers each day and has been following the war in Iraq carefully.”

Ex-Hawk Spitzer Calls Iraq a Waste of Tax Dollars

Ex-Hawk Spitzer Calls Iraq a Waste of Tax Dollars

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