Pelosi Says She Miscalculated GOP Determination on Iraq

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., admitted Thursday that she had underestimated the willingness of Republicans to stand behind President Bush’s Iraq policy despite the drubbing the GOP took in the polls in 2006.

“The assumption I made was that the Republicans would soon see the light,” she said. Instead, the minority stuck to the president’s war policy in the face of unrelenting pressure from congressional Democrats and powerful lobbying campaigns by anti-war groups.

Bush has consistently refused to accept any limitations on his authority to direct military operations in Iraq, or on funds destined for the war effort. Democrats have been unable to muster enough votes to force him to accept a timetable for withdrawal of combat troops or a change in their mission in Iraq.

“That was a revelation to me, because I felt the American peoples’ voices were so strong and still are in this regard that I hoped that with some compromise and reaching out there might be some change in direction,” Pelosi said. “But they are sticking with the president on this.”

Democrats thus are ending their first year in power without producing the major Iraq policy change that had been a major selling point to voters in 2006.

“The grassroots are justifiably disappointed and I am too that we have not done more to end this war,” Pelosi said.

Republicans say the Democrats’ effort to force a withdrawal from Iraq has run out of steam because of the success of this year’s “surge” strategy of sending in some 30,000 extra U.S. combat troops to help quell violence. They point to the decline in Iraqi and American casualties as proof the new strategy is working and say it should be allowed to continue to work.