HOEKSTRA: CHANGE THE MISSION

Rep. Peter Hoekstra is considered to be a star among the wingnuts. He's been on Slots Bennett's and Sean Hannity's shows many times and is usually trotted out to defend some Bush failure. Via Memeorandum ( 9:45 PM ET, August 24, 2007), I learn that Hoekstra says the only way out now is to once again change the mission:

Hoekstra says Iraq democracy strategy is doomed to fail

August 24, 2007
By CHRIS CHRISTOFF
DETROIT FREE PRESS
LANSING BUREAU

EAST LANSING – The U.S. effort to install a democracy in Iraq within three to five years was a flawed strategy with little chance of succeeding, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra said Friday.

The Holland Republican said the Iraq government needs new leadership, but said it’s up to Iraqis to change it.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said as the Iraqi government flounders, he’s changed his original support for the Bush administration’s stated goal of molding a democratic Iraq as a means to stabilize the Middle East.

Speaking during a taping of Michigan Public Television’s “Off the Record,” Hoekstra said in a Muslim country dominated by rival tribal factions, western-style democracy is not workable.

“You’ve got a culture where democracy is not part of, ‘Let’s go there,’ ” Hoekstra said. ”It was a stretch.”

But Hoekstra said he opposes setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. He said Congress and President George W. Bush must decide on a unified course of action that will stabilize Iraq, based on new intelligence reports and a much-anticipated September status report by the U.S. top commander in Iraq,Gen. David Petraeus.

He said he met with Sunni tribal chiefs who hold politically sway in Iraq, and concluded, ‘They are not looking for a county commission to tell them what to do.”

To reach that consensus, Hoekstra said Bush should drop the notion of a democratic Iraq.