DENVER-
Longshot GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo said Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should be held responsible for the deaths of all American soldiers in Iraq from now on after Reid said the war there is “lost.”
Tancredo, a congressman representing the Denver suburbs, said Reid should introduce legislation to force President Bush to bring troops home, “because if (Reid) truly believes what he says, then every life lost from this day on sits solely on his lap for doing nothing to back up his words.”
Tancredo called Reid’s comments “reckless” and “brash.”
The Senate has already passed legislation that would set a nonbinding goal of bringing combat troops home by March 31, 2008. Bush has said he would veto the measure if it gets to his desk.
Reid, a Nevada Democrat, supports separate legislation that would cut off funding for combat missions after March 2008. That proposal would allow the money to be spent on such efforts as counterterrorism and training Iraqi security forces.
Reid said he told Bush on Wednesday that he thought the war could not be won through military force, but only by political, economic and diplomatic means.
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and—you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows—(know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq (Wednesday),” Reid said.
