Frank Gaffney: Bush Should Stop Apologizing

Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Frank Gaffney is urging President Bush and other top administration officials to stop issuing public apologies for the mistreatment by U.S. military police of suspected Iraqi terrorists at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

"There is a point beyond which apologizing sounds an awful lot like groveling," Gaffney told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley on Saturday as President Bush prepared to issue his fourth apology for the Iraqi prison scandal during his weekly radio address.

"That's not appropriate, it seems to me, especially when the danger of doing so is to feed the impression of sort of collective guilt; that there is, in fact, more of a policy impetus behind this behavior than there actually is," he added.

Gaffney said the repeated apologies "simply feed into our enemies' ambitions and agenda."

"It unquestionably demoralizes our troops, who, let's remember, every single day are dying or being wounded in defense of the things that are our policies there," he insisted.

"It makes it that much less likely that we will, in fact, be able to enjoy the support of the American people to be able stay the course, as I think we must," the former Reagan administration official warned.

Listen to WABC Radio's Monica Crowley in her new time slot, Saturdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, Sundays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET.

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