Pelosi: Not ending Iraq war is my biggest disappointment

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): Getty Images Photo
COLUMBUS – Nancy Pelosi’s biggest disappointment during her tenure as speaker of the House is not ending the Iraq war, the California Democrat said Wednesday morning.

Pelosi, speaking at a women’s roundtable for 15th Congressional District candidate Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus), said she wished her party could have forced President Bush to set a specific date for withdrawal from Iraq.

“The one challenge that I, personally I’m sorry, we were not able to do was to end the war in Iraq,” she said. “The public was there, they were there early, they knew we had to do that but still the president had enough people with him that he could stay the course there.”

In Spring 2007, Congressional Democrats passed a spending bill that would continue funding U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq only if a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq set. President Bush vetoed the bill, and House Democrats could not secure enough votes to override that veto.

Pelosi said today a fixed date for withdrawal was the proper action to end the war.

“That for me was the was the biggest disappointment in the last two years, that we were not able to have a date certain to redeploy our troops out of Iraq when it was safe, honorable, responsible and soon for our troops to come home,” Pelosi said.

The speaker of the House added that troop withdrawal from Iraq will happen soon because the U.S. cannot afford to spend its money in Iraq, while the Iraqi government runs surpluses from oil revenue.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized Democrats’ plans to withdraw from Iraq. Republican presidential nominee John McCain has warned that setting a date for U.S. withdrawal would be “setting a date for surrender.”

In April, McCain said premature withdrawal from Iraq would be catastrophic.

"It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal,” he said.