Bob Deans / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution – 2007-08-04 22:57:02

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/08/03/newt0803.html

Gingrich Says War on Terror ‘Phony’
Former Speaker Says Energy Independence Is Key

WASHINGTON (August 3, 2007) — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a “phony war” on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support.

“None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war,” the ex-Georgian told a group of about 300 students attending a conference for collegiate conservatives.

Gingrich, who led the so-called Republican Revolution that won the GOP control of both houses of Congress in 1994 midterm elections, said more must be done to marshal national resources to combat Islamic militants at home and abroad and to prepare the country for future attack. He was unstinting in his criticism of his fellow Republicans, in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

“We were in charge for six years,” he said, referring to the period between 2001 and early 2007, when the GOP controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. “I don’t think you can look and say that was a great success.”

Thursday’s National Conservative Student Conference was sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, a Herndon, Va.-based group founded in the 1960s as a political counterpoint to the left-leaning activists who coalesced around the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War.

Gingrich retains strong support among conservatives and ranked fifth among possible Republican nominees behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, with the backing of 7 percent of those queried in a ABC News/Washington Post poll taken last week. The poll surveyed 403 Republicans and Republican-leaning adults nationwide and has a 5 percentage-point margin of error.

“I believe we need to find leaders who are prepared to tell the truth … about the failures of the performance of Republicans … failed bureaucracies … about how dangerous the world is,” he said when asked what kind of Republican he would back for president.

Gingrich has been promoting a weekly political newsletter he calls “Winning the Future.” It’s available free to those who leave their e-mail addresses at www.winningthefuture.net, one of several Web sites he is connected with or operating. Gingrich began writing the newsletter in April 2006, and it now goes out to 311,000 readers each week, said Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler.

Political Salon
At another Web site — www.americansolutions.com — Gingrich is running a virtual political salon, with video clips, organizational information and contacts revolving around his conservative vision for the country’s future. It asks supporters to join in an Internet “Solutions Day” on Sept. 27, the anniversary of Gingrich’s so-called Contract With America, a slate of conservative policies he led through Congress as speaker of the House a decade and a half ago.

“What I’m trying to start is a new dialogue that is evidence-based,” Gingrich said Thursday. “It doesn’t start from the right wing, it doesn’t start from the left wing,” he said, but is an effort to get politicians and voters to “look honestly at the evidence of what isn’t working and tell us how to change it.”

Gingrich was interrupted with applause once, when he called for an end to the biting partisanship critics say has polarized national politics and paralyzed the workings of government.

“We have got to get past this partisan baloney, where I’m not allowed to say anything good about Hillary Clinton because ‘I’m not a loyal Republican,’ and she’s not allowed to say anything good about me, or she’s not a ‘loyal’ Democrat. What a stupid way to run a country.”

He reserved his most pointed criticism for the administration’s handling of the global campaign against terrorist groups.

“We’ve been engaged in a phony war,” said Gingrich. “The only people who have been taking this seriously are the combat military.”

His remarks seemed to reflect, in part, the findings of a National Intelligence Estimate made public last month.

In the estimate, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that six years of U.S. efforts to degrade the al-Qaida terrorist group had left the organization constrained but still potent, having “protected or regenerated” the capability to attack the United States in ways that have left the country “in a heightened threat environment.”

“We have to take this seriously,” said Gingrich. “We used to be a serious country. When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,” he said, referring to World War II.

“We beat all three in less than four years. We’re about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against … [terrorist groups], and we’re losing.”

Successful Approach
Gingrich said he would lay out in a Sept. 10 speech what a successful U.S. approach to this threat would have looked like over the past six years.

“First of all, we have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, ‘We’re not going to rely on you,’ ” he said.

The United States imports about 14 million barrels of oil a day, making up two-thirds of its total consumption.
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