VILSACK CALLS ON McCAIN TO CHANGE WAR STANCE

With a CNN poll released Monday night showing just 11% of Americans supporting the call for additional troops in Iraq - a decision President Bush appears to be ready to make - Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack is calling on Arizona Sen. John McCain to drop his call for more boots on the ground.
Vilsack, a Democratic candidate for president sent an open letter to McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, asking him to back off the call for more troops.

"Despite these failures, you have advocated a proposal to deploy as many as 100,000 additional American servicemen and women to Iraq. Increasing the American military presence in Iraq is opposed both by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and American military commanders in Iraq, including Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the second-highest-ranking American officer in Iraq."

Vilsack says in the letter to McCain that the Arizona Senator's actions have sent the wrong message to a rather stubborn President Bush.

"Your suggestion to deploy additional American servicemen and women to Iraq would make a big mistake even bigger and send the wrong message to President Bush, who has stubbornly refused to recognize that his Administration's military and diplomatic failures in Iraq have recklessly endangered America's national interests."

Meanwhile, Vilsack made his national TV debut last night on The Daily Show, where he talked about host John Stewart's fascination with Vilsack's somewhat unusual-sounding surname and about the plan to send more troops to Iraq.