GOP hopefuls blast Bush on Mideast

Two likely Republican presidential candidates told a Christian audience that Bush administration policies endangered Israel.

 

 

 

 

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives who has yet to formally announce his candidacy, told this week’s Washington summit of Christians United for Israel conference that President Bush was not doing enough to confront Hamas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If George W. Bush wanted to send a signal to Hamas tomorrow morning, he could move the embassy to Jerusalem tomorrow,” reported The Jerusalem Post. “We don’t have a peace process. We have a surrender process.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made a surprise visit to the rally and spoke out against radical Islam and Iran’s nuclear program. He blamed what he said was the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq for endangering Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

“The Iranians were emboldened, the Syrians were emboldened, the north Koreans are emboldened,” he said. “If we bring about a secure environment in Iraq then that will have a beneficial effect on the Iranians and the Syrians and of course, on the security of this tiny little nation which now has a terrorist organization running Gaza, and a terrorist organization in southern Lebanon, and is literally surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction,”