Conservatives Criticize the Pullback that Republicans Stipulated

Say what??? A number of conservatives have criticized the U.S. pullback, seeming to forget that the date was stipulated in an agreement hammered out by the Bush administration (and hailed at the time by the war's supporters as a victory for President Bush's Iraq policy). Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute called the pullback a "projection of weakness," and warned that the day "will likely mark another milestone: the end of the surge and the relative peace it brought to Iraq." Vice President Cheney -- who assured Americans in May 2005 that the insurgency was in its "last throes" -- used the occasion as another opportunity to cast the Obama administration as irresponsible, warning that he "would not want to see the US waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point." Responding to Cheney's attacks, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said on MSNBC's Countdown this week, "He's trying to predict disasters -- another al Qaeda attack, more violence in Iraq; and say, in advance of these things happening, if they happen, it will be because of something Obama did. Even though in this case, it's something that Bush did.