Pelosi: President Bush Missed an Opportunity at the U.N. Today

September 23, 2003

Washington, D.C. -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today following President Bush's speech to the United Nations General Assembly:

"In his speech today, the President missed an opportunity to show his commitment to securing a United Nations mandate for an international force to bring security and stability to Iraq. I had hoped the President would have sought international consensus in a spirit of cooperation. By not doing so, the President underscored how much difficult work remains before we get a significant amount of international participation in the effort to stabilize Iraq.

"Instead of a realistic plan for post-war Iraq, what we have seen from the Administration is misrepresentation of the facts, misleading of the public, and miscalculation of the risks after the war.

"The American people have seen the cost of that miscalculation: hundreds of American lives lost and a bill for $87 billion in additional spending. The President is proposing to spend more per person in Iraq on school and health care than we are spending on Americans. He has his priorities wrong -- we need to have a balance between what we are spending in Iraq and how we meet critical needs here at home."

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