Well, if you're California Senator and legendary dim bulb Barbara Boxer, you monopolize the one chance you have of serving your constituents, all of them, not just the ones who are as crazy as you are, by engaging in dialogue on Iraq with the two people that have spent considerable more energy and effort than you have on the Iraq issue, and who might know a thing or two more than you do.  But alas, Senator Boxer chose not to use her time in that fashion.

Instead, she talked down to General Petraeus, completely ignored Ambassador Ryan Crocker, insinuated that Petraeus was a liar, accused him of cherry-picking facts and figures while doing exactly the same thing herself, offered her own version of reality and ended without giving Petraeus the courtesy of responding to her diatribe.  Check out yourself the Barbara Boxer-Democrat school of open debate.



If there is a funny part about this, it's at the very end when she turns it back over to Chairman Joe Biden.  Now Biden is famous for monopolizing the time allotted to him during the Roberts and Alito Supreme Court confirmation hearings, falling so in love with the sound of his own voice that he simply ran out of time before he got around to asking a question.  In this case, however, even Biden, never at a loss for words, especially when there's a camera pointed in his general direction, didn't know quite what to say after the Boxer rant, and said meekly to General Petraeus maybe he might respond to Senator Boxer in writing.  So much for the honor and respect the Democrats are going out of their way to say they are paying to Petraeus and Crocker.  There was nothing honorable or respectful in the conduct of Boxer, and even Biden knew it.

While General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker moved to the Senate to field questions, there was an interesting start to the day on the floor of the Senate.  After the opening prayer and comments from Harry Reid, Texas Senator John Cornyn took to the floor to offer an amendment to the Transportation and Housing bill currently being debated.

It was a simple amendment, one that wouldn't cost any money, and relatively speaking, wouldn't cost much time.  It was a simple request that a sense of the Senate be taken to reaffirm support for the credibility of General Petraeus, and denounce as a body the despicable MoveOn.org full-page ad that ran in the New York Times essentially calling the General a traitor. 

At the end of his presentation, in walked Kentucky Senator and Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. Here's what he had to say.



Washington Democrat Patty Murray was managing the time on the transportation bill for the majority, and at this point, she knew she had a problem.  The last thing she wanted to do today was have the Democrats be put on record as either endorsing or rejecting MoveOn.org's ad.  The Democrats know they overreached, but you don't want to go out of your way to upset the money people.  So she called in reinforcements in the person of Illinois Senator and majority whip, Dick Durbin.  Here's a portion of his remarks in defense of the attempt to quash the Cornyn amendment.




Refreshingly, to Durbin's credit, he did say he doesn't agree with the characterization of General Petraeus by MoveOn.org a few times in here.  This, of course, coming from the same Senator who compared our troops at Abu Ghraib to the Nazis, Pol Pot and the Soviet gulags. 

But then the weasely lawyer side of Durbin kicked in. As a defense to why the Senate shouldn't be in the business of weighing in when a political organization steps in it, he compares the actions of MoveOn.org over the weekend in the New York Times to that of the Swift Boat Vets when they attacked the record of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign, a ridiculous comparison to try and make.

The Swifties, themselves vets that served in Vietnam, went after claims made by politician and candidate John Kerry.  That's certainly their prerogative. But I do not believe they were major donors to all quarters in the Republican Party, the way MoveOn.org has spent money on Democratic candidates at all levels of government.  The Swifties didn't like John Kerry, and their mission was to defeat John Kerry for president, a mission that was accomplished.

Durbin decried that no Republican Senator weighed in during the attack on Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign as a defense why the Democrats shouldn't be required to vote today to renounce MoveOn.org.  Does he not see the difference between fellow vets going after a political candidate, and an organization that has claimed they own the Democratic Party, they've bought it, that has not attacked a political candidate, but slandered the top General in Iraq as a traitor, a General that was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to implement the very plan that he is now reporting on?  General Petraeus is not running for office.  He's conducting a war.  John Kerry wanted to be president. 

There is no comparison to make.  MoveOn.org's ad is reprehensible, and beside the Durbin slap on the wrist, there has been no Senator that has dared to call them onto the carpet for what they did to General Petraeus.  In fact, the Democrats went through the motion of asking the chair to rule on the germaneness of Cornyn's resolution as a way of protecting the Democrats from having to put on record a vote on MoveOn.org.  Naturally, one of the beneficiaries of MoveOn money, Jon Tester in Montana, sat in the chair, and without reservation, ruled the Cornyn amendment dead because is was not germane.  According tothis Congressional Quarterly report, Jon Tester had received at least $88,000 dollars of MoveOn.org money in his successful bid to unseat Conrad Burns.

Look for the Republicans to bring this back up repeatedly, as the Democrats struggle to continue taking MoveOn cash, but pretend they have no influence with the Democratic Party. 

Not to be outdone on the outrage scale by her South Florida colleague, Bob Wexler, Orange County, California's Sanchez, the very last person in the House of Representatives that you would expect to be invited to a gathering of Mensa, concluded the Joint House hearing with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

Of all the things she could focus on, she asked a question about the facts on the ground versus an ABC News/BBC poll that better supports the Democrats' view that there is nothing good to be found in Iraq as long as George Bush has anything to do with it.
 

Note that after she finally gets around to her question, she directs the poll question to Ambassador Crocker, who cites the statistics he knows.  Sanchez interrupts and drops the insinuation that General Petraeus is manipulating the numbers in Iraq, essentially lying in his report, he numbers in his report, saying "and General Petraues will know what I mean by that."  

Later in her presentation, dripping with condescension, she slags the entire Iraqi population as saying we are the only good thing happening in their economy.  

She is an idiot.  And it is pretty well known even in the House of Representatives that she is an idiot.  And idiots being able to prosper and rise to the level of being able to ask questions of four-star generals in time of war is one of the things that is truly remarkable about this country.  But no one likes a condescending idiot.  It may be fair to say that when compared to the 160,000 men and women under General Petraeus' command, Congresswoman Sanchez may rank in the 2nd percentile in intelligence.  

But make no mistake, Sanchez, like Bob Wexler, like MoveOn.org, like the Code Pink protestors, like the Democrats in the Senate who were silent today when they should have been renouncing the New York Times ad today, does not hold the military in anything but contempt.

South Florida, Wexler is your idiot.  Here he is on display at the Petraues hearing just a little bit ago




To paraphrase what was said to Senator Joe McCarthy so many years ago, Congressman, have you no shame?

Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman joined Hugh Hewitt earlier this afternoon, and Hugh played for him the offending comments from fellow Senator Chuck Schumer on the floor of the Senate yesterday.  Here is the audio of that segment, and here is the full transcript.  Senator Lieberman was very clear in his reaction. 

HH: I know he’s your friend, but Chuck Schumer had some extraordinary remarks to make on the Senate floor yesterday. Let me give you a slice of them. 

JL: Yeah. 

CS: The violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes, we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. 

HH:  Senator Lieberman, despite the surge… 

JL: Yeah. 

HH: …and the inability of American soldiers? It sounds like he’s blasting our troops as ineffective and failures. 

JL: Yeah, I noted that, and as we say in the Senate, with all respect to my colleague from New York, I just, I couldn’t disagree with him more. In some senses, it’s an insult to the American troops. And look, beyond that, because the American troops don’t insult easily, this is just factually wrong. I mean, what’s happened in Anbar is unbelievable. I was there in early June, I had been there six months before, and you know, John McCain and I were there together. We wanted to go into Ramadi, and they wouldn’t let us go in, because it was unsafe. This time, I went in, walked around to the markets, stopped and got some ice cream with a bunch of kids. I mean, it was, thank God, very different. And the reason that happened is one, in my opinion, the surge, because the increase in Marines in Anbar Province said to the Iraqis, most of whom are Sunni in that province, okay, the Americans are not turning tail and leaving. Second, they saw what al Qaeda was doing. They saw that these people are fanatics and killers and their enemy,  and they decided if the Americans are willing to stay here and help us a little bit, they’re really much more on our side than al Qaeda is. And of course, they’re right. So it was, it was in fact the bravery of the American troops which encouraged the Sunnis to begin to take, the tribes to take on al Qaeda. And the story is really the most encouraging thing that’s happened in Iraq in a long time, and not in spite of our troops, but in fact because of them.

Read the rest here, or listen to the rest here.  Lieberman has a lot to say, and you can tell he's not very happy with the performance of this current crop of Democrats when it comes to national security.

Yesterday, Chuck Schumer, the senior Senator from New York, took to the Senate floor and inexplicably denied any success of the surge in Iraq, when even elected members of his own party who have been staunch critics of the President's Iraq policy have come back from inspection tours of Iraq touting the surge's success.  But he did so in a way that slandered the American troops, denying they were involved in anything that could be perceived to be a success regarding the surge.  Here's what Rush called this morning Schumer's macaca moment:

The violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda, said to these tribes: "We have to fight al Qaeda ourselves."

Again, Schumer is saying the only perceived success in the al-Anbar region is specifically due to the failure of our American troops. 

Today, Schumer again rose to speak on the floor of the Senate, and attempted to walk back from what he said yesterday.  You can see the video for yourself.  Here's his three minute prepared statement he read:

First, I know we all have the deepest gratitude and respect for the sacrifice of the brave men and women serving our country so valiantly in Iraq. Make no mistake about it, the troops are doing their job.

Yesterday, the inability of U.S. troops to provide protection caused tribal sheiks to give up on expecting any help from the U.S. military. Today, after receiving the ire of people furious that he slagged on the troops, Schumer feels the need to praise the troops.  It is hollow praise.

I'm concerned, however, that their mission is not worthy of their great sacrifice, especially the President's surge.  The surge, despite earlier reports this week, has failed to meet the objectives set out by the President. And the President can't change that fact by changing the goal. He's now claiming progress in Iraq as evidence that the surge directed at Baghdad is working.

Here, Chuck Schumer is introducing another historical rewrite, one newer than yesterday.  The surge was directed at Baghad. Get used to that meme, because that's now the measure by which Chuck Schumer and the Democrats will try and claim failure.  They will want you to believe that the surge was never meant to do anything except try and pacify Baghdad.  It wasn't.  On the White House's website, a site that's available to Schumer's staffers, dated January 10th of this year, the outline of the surge says the following:

Key Elements Of The New Approach: Security

Coalition:

• Agree that helping Iraqis to provide population security is necessary to enable accelerated transition and political progress.
• Provide additional military and civilian resources to accomplish this mission.
• Increase efforts to support tribes willing to help Iraqis fight Al Qaeda in Anbar.
• Accelerate and expand the embed program while minimizing risk to participants

So Schumer is lying about the original goal of the surge.  It wasn't just to pacify Baghdad.  It was to fight al Qaeda where they were, which at the time was in Anbar, and to help locals hold those areas.  That's now happened.  Schumer's denial is not based on anything resembling facts or evidence.

While the President has claimed progress in Anbar, it was not the surge that brought the momentary calm to this region, because the surge was focused mainly on Baghdad.

Chuck Schumer thinks that by scripting out hollow support for the brave men and women in the military, he can walk back from the criticism he's received for slandering them.  But he's not walked back from anything.  He just doubled down.  He denies that our military had anything to do with the progress in Anbar, and he does so by using the false reality that the surge was focused mainly on Baghdad.  So he's now lying while using another lie as evidence.  

It's objective, as stated by the President himself, was to create breathing room for the central Iraqi government to make political progress.  Our brave troops have been in Anbar for years and years doing the first rate job they always do, in what is a very difficult environment. Now, however, some elements of the local population, and some of their leaders, have made common cause with the brave men and women of our military. They've cooperated with our troops out of distaste for the brutal methods of al Qaeda. While this is a welcome and helpful development, it's neither the foundation upon which a successful long term strategy can be launched, nor is it a result of the surge, which was targeted mainly in Baghdad.

One of the more nuanced pieces of disingenuousness in a while from Senator Schumer.  The surge is creating breathing space. And yes, our troops have been to Anbar before. But unlike the previous policy, once we cleared an area, there was no mechanism in place to hold the area once our people cleared it.  Now with the surge, that policy has changed, and the locals have taken notice of it.  That's one of the reasons why they're now cooperating.  But Schumer is now contradicting what he said yesterday and earlier today.  Yesterday, our troops' inability. Today, the local sheiks are cooperating with us.  You can't have it both ways. 

Senator Lieberman just said on a segment that will play back on tonight's Hugh Hewitt Show that Chuck Schumer's comments yesterday "were an insult" to the troops. He's right.  Chuck Schumer's denial of the surge yesterday was an insult, and today's attempt to reword it is nothing less.
  

And so the fall Senate session shifts into gear as the senior Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, takes to the floor after the August recess and gives his assessment of the surge in Iraq.  Here's the nub of what Schumer said in his 10 minute address to his anti-war fringe and, for that matter, the remnants of al Qaeda that have been getting wiped out in Iraq over the last four months.

And let me be clear, the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn't that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here. And that is because there was no one else there protecting.

Get it? Schumer is saying that the Bush-Petraeus plan is such a failure that the tribal sheiks had to take matters into their own hands because our military was so inept.  Our military had nothing to do with clearing out al Qaeda out of Ramadi and Baquba, news that will I'm sure come as quite a surprise to the brave men and women who distinctly remember things a little differently, having flushed out al Qaeda and all. 

But what Schumer says is important, because it telegraphs the tack that the Democrats are going to take in days and weeks ahead.  The Democrats have the same view of the military that they do of all Americans.  The average American, according to the liberal view, cannot make it on their own without government programs, regulation or control.  The same holds true for the military.  They cannot possibly get it right if they are led by a conservative commander-in-chief.  

Not only is Schumer calling the American military incompetent, he's calling them liars, as well.  Here's what General Petraeus had to say about Anbar on Hugh's show in July:

But the detention, or the capture or killing of the number of leaders that we have taken out in recent months, and weeks, actually, and the progress in terms of just clearing areas of them…as you know, Anbar Province has really become quite relatively clear of al Qaeda. Eastern Anbar still has some, and we are working in that area. We have recently cleared Western Baquba, which was almost al Qaeda central, the capitol of the new caliphate that they have tried to establish here in Iraq. So there has been considerable progress against them...

About a month later, Major General James Simmons, deputy commanding general for Multi-National Forces in Iraq, had the following to say about al-Anbar Province:

Well, the operation that you’re talking about that I mentioned the other day was Operation Lightning Hammer which was conducted by MND-North [Multi-National Division-North], which is headquartered out of Hawaii, the 25^th Infantry Division commanded by Major General Randy Mixon. They conducted a 12-day, large scale operation in Diyala to disrupt al Qaeda and other terrorist elements that are operating in the Diyala River Valley. And the operation went into the process of clearing about fifty villages and palm groves. It was a very successful operation, resulted in 26 al Qaeda members being killed, and 37 of them detained, 10 very large weapons caches were taken down in the process of this operation that went on there north and east of Baqubah.  

So this didn't happen, according to Chuck Schumer.  Generals Petraeus and Simmons are liars.  Sunni and Shia warlords got tired of our troops spinning their wheels while building up the surge size and chased out al Qaeda themselves.  

Ed Gillespie, Counselor to the President and present in al-Anbar over the weekend, told Hugh in an interview today that these same tribal sheiks that Schumer is calling warlords told President Bush that yes, they once fought against multi-national forces, but now have fought side by side with our forces to root out al Qaeda.  

Schumer's attitude towards the military, and the contempt in which he holds them, needs to be remembered as we approach November, '08.  There is one party that respects the military and appreciates the service they provide to all of us, and there is one party that uses them as a political tool, and are willing to completely rewrite history to deny any good the military does in order to make political gains.  Which one are you going to vote for?

Now that the August recess is over, the Senators have congregated back in Washington to begin their fall session.  The Democrats' feckless leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, took to the floor to describe his time off.  Here's what he had to say:



After a Robert Byrd-esque ode to the desert thunderstorm, he said he went all around his state, and his people complained to him about the high cost of energy (more government needed to regulate and tax oil companies and Halliburton), about the damaging effects of burning fuels on environment (more regulation and taxes on oil companies to stop global warming), about needing more affordable health care (more taxes and government to pay for Hillarycare II, coming soon if the polls are right in November, '08) about tuitions being too high (more government programs needed, paid for by ending tax cuts), and ending the war (cutting and running to appease their fringe base). So in other words, his "people" are telling him exactly the same things he said he would tackle when the Democrats took over the Senate eight months ago.  So if Nevadans are still calling for the same things that Reid and the Democrats were touting as agenda items at the beginning of the year, that tells me they've failed on those five benchmarks.  Maybe we need a new direction in the Senate.  Maybe this failed policy of Democratic leadership should be recognized for what it is and then we can begin with a change in strategy.

A little bit later, however, Reid bore down on Iraq, especially with the news on the surge being what it is, and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker coming to town in a week.  Here's what Reid had to say about that:



So above all, we need to continue to push for an end to the war.  Senator Reid hopes President Bush's report will finally do the right thing and change the mission and reduce troops...but he says he'll receive the report with an open mind, followed by the death and injured count, and the same tired mantra from the anti-war left.  Note for the record that the fall session is officially 20 minutes old at this point, and Harry Reid has already told a whopper to the American people.  He has absolutely no intention on keeping an open mind to what Petraeus, Crocker and Bush may have to say next week.  His mind is made up.  If Senator Reid were Pharoah, Moses and the Jews would still be stuck in Egypt. 

Then, predictably, Reid used as his new line in the sand from which to declare defeat the meme that there is not enough political progress in Iraq to warrant the continued presence there.  Keep in mind that the surge didn't achieve full strength until June of this year, or roughly four months.  He's right.  Shame on those Iraqis for not fully constituting a new government out of the ashes of generations of brutal dictatorship while simultaneously building and training a military to root out thousands of foreign jihadists and other militant puppets funded by either Saudi or Iranian elements in the last four months. I mean, look what Senator Reid has done in the last four months.  He brought up the immigration bill in the Senate twice...and got his teeth kicked in.  He brought up multiple resolutions to begin precipitously withdrawing troops from Iraq...and got his teeth kicked in.  He did get a minimum wage bill passed, although unlike the Iraqis, he was able to do that without targeted by rogue Shia or Sunni militias in Searchlight, Nevada.  

Should the Iraqis be doing more on the national level to promote reconciliation? Of course.  But it still seems rather silly that the leader of one part of the American national government, one that has had such a lousy list of accomplishments in eight months, can call for a complete democratic political birth in a country still weeding out infested insurgents in half the time he's had to get stuff done. 

To borrow a line from the Clash's Should I Stay Or Should I Go, "This indecision's buggin' me."

In order to start out this post right, a little Fred Dalton Thompson quiz must be taken.  When was the first date Fred Thompson publicly announced that he was considering a run at the presidency in 2008?  

A) March 11, 2007   B)  April 11, 2007   C)  May 11, 2007 

The answer is A, March 11, 2007, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.  

We are now under two weeks away from the six month anniversary of Thompson’s announcement he was considering getting into the race, and here’s what’s transpired at Team Thompson. 

• April 4 – Fred gives a speech in conservative hotbed of Orange County, California to the Lincoln Club.  Speech is fine on substance, but he gives a lackluster delivery. 
• April 11 –  Fred announced on Fox News to Neil Cavuto he has non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. 
• May 09 - Talk is now about Fred 2.0, trying to improve on public speaking skill demonstrated at Lincoln Club the week before.  
• May 21 – Fred dissolves his Senatorial PAC and hires former George H.W. Bush staffer Tom Collamore as campaign manager of the campaign that doesn’t exist yet. 
• May 30 – Inside sources tell Politico’s Mike Allen that Fred will officially jump into the race over July 4^th weekend.  
• June 01 – Fred announces exploratory “testing the waters” committee. 
• June 03 – Fred gives speech to Virginia GOP in Richmond.  Former Dick Cheney staffer Mary Matalin announces she’s joining the campaign that doesn’t exist yet. 
• June 13 – Fred appears on Tonight Show and tells Jay Leno while he’s never craved the office of president, there are things he wants to do that can only be done as president. 
• June 27 – Fred tells crowd at GOP luncheon in South Carolina, “We'll be talking about that later, not today, but not too long.” 
• July 11 – Carl Cameron reports on Fox News that his sources say an August announcement by Thompson saying he’s running is likely. Mike Allen of Politico gets a more cryptic answer from a Thompson staffer – “When FDT is ready to announce.” 
• July 15 – Fred adds staff to communications and a political director. 
• July 17 – Rumors are that Fred definitely won’t announce anything official in July. 
• July 24 – After 65 days on the job, Tom Collamore is out as the campaign manager of the camapaign that doesn’t exist yet.  Randy Enwright would take over.
• July 25 – J.T. Mastranadi quits as head of research for the campaign that doesn’t exist, citing lack of structure. 
• July 27 – Fred appears on Hannity & Colmes, and says a final decision on whether he’s running or not will be made soon, 139 days after he first hinted to Chris Wallace he was considering the run for the presidency.  Team Thompson also loses Tom Frechette, formerly the deputy under Tom Collamore as campaign manger of the campaign that doesn’t exist. 
• August 07 – Fred website 2.0 launches. 
• August 08 – Bill Lacy takes the reins as campaign manager for the campaign that still doesn’t exist. Rumors of a post-Labor Day announcement surfaces as Fred prepares for first arrival in Iowa. 
• August 20 – Burson Snyder resigns as spokeswoman, citing a desire to find a better professional fit. 
• August 27 – Communications director Linda Rozett is fired. Rozett is understood to be the reason why Burson Snyder resigned just a week earlier.   
• August 30 – Todd Harris is hired to replace Linda Rozett in communications. Team Thompson makes announcement that Fred will make official announcement on September 6^th, by way of webcast.  If Senator Thompson keeps this date, it will be exactly 180 days after he first publicly hinted he was thinking about it.   

There are many downsides to having a presidential campaign begin in earnest this far out in front of Election Day, as it has in this cycle.  Voter fatigue is surely going to occur along the way. But if there is one positive note about such a long campaign cycle, it’s to see how effective each candidate is at managing their campaigns.  Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have run the best campaigns thus far on the Republican side, and you have to give Hillary Rodham Clinton credit. Her campaign is literally a machine that should be studied and emulated for generations to come.  Fred Thompson, however, does present the Republican voter concerns over such a turbulent summer with key officials in an under-the-radar campaign coming and going, many of them citing lack of structure as the reason for their departure.  That doesn’t exactly imbue the average voter with confidence that a Thompson administration will hit the ground running in 2009, especially during wartime. 

Another aspect of a long campaign cycle is you get to see more opportunities to see how candidates make decisions.  And here, Republican voters can judge all of the leading contenders, but again, the one person that sticks out the most for analysis is Fred Thompson.  Perhaps the most important decision a presidential has to make is the most obvious one – the decision to enter the race. And while many Beltway pundits will debate the strategy that Thompson has employed thus far to time the entry into the race, trying to raise money below the radar, capitalizing on the television celebrity without having to discuss issues in a debate format, giving opponents ammunition, the perception of the average voter, after six months of hearing that Thompson is getting in the race, is he begins to sound like the boy who cried wolf. When he finally does announce, if he does, there is not going to be the initial excitement and bump in the polls that a candidate usually hopes for.   

Fred Thompson was an able Senator, a solid conservative, by all accounts a good guy, but his decision-making skills are questionable at best.  If a crisis occurs during a Thompson administration, one would expect him to be able to make instant decisions and stick by them, not kick the can down the road until you put together a support team you’re finally comfortable with in order to formally announce six months later that you’re ready to finally make your official announcement a week and a half later.  The world doesn’t work that way anymore.  Being president in the 21^st Century requires real time assessment, and real time decisions being made.  Unfortunately, Fred Thompson has not shown he has this skill set.  He might possess it, but he’s done a lousy job so far of showing it.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig obviously did a very bad thing in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport in June.  Whatever took place between Senator Craig and an undercover police officer was bad enough that Senator Craig tried to hide it from everyone around him, public and private.  It was bad enough that he pled guilty, hoping it would stay buried forever.  There are many things about this affair that have made him politically radioactive, and fatally so. The press statement he gave to the media earlier Tuesday afternoon did not help make his predicament any less dire.  In fact, it made it worse.  

Senator Craig said very strongly that he did not do anything wrong, that he is not gay, and that he is not ruling out running for re-election next November. Here's what else Senator Craig has not done.

He has not estimated highly enough that his 'I shoulda hired a lawyer instead of trying to solve this myself' excuse doesn't fly with the American people.  If there is one steadfast rule in politics, it often isn't the original crime that gets you, it's the covering up or attempting to bury it that does you in.  Senator Craig did not appear as being remotely honest and forthright today.  He came across as arrogant, defiant, and the victim of bad decision making because news stories about him.

He has not realized how badly he hurt the Republican Party's chances in '08, especially in the Senate, by his actions both in June and especially now in the last 48 hours.  By not facing up to the music and simply announcing he will not seek re-election, or saying today that in order to make sure that Idaho is represented in the manner they deserve, he is resigning immediately, he has now virtually guaranteed that the Republicans can't win back the Senate in 2008.  

Although the members are still in their home states enjoying the last couple of weeks of their August recess, I've had many conversations today with Hill staffers on the Republican side who can't emphasize clearly enough how steamed their bosses are at Larry Craig.  Consider for a moment the plight of Nevada Senator John Ensign, who drew the short straw this cycle as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  He has 22 Republican Senators up for re-election next November, and his task is to try and raise funds that many of these Senators are going to rely on in part to hold onto their seats.  If Larry Craig remains defiant and opts to run again, as he strongly hinted today, he's going to be in line for some of that money. And unless Ensign can effectively create a way in the NRSC charter to legally raise money specific to one candidate or another, he's not going to raise a dime if Americans believe that there's a good chance it's going to someone convicted of illicit behavior in a public restroom.

What's Ensign's fundraising letter going to look like?  It's an uphill battle because of how many seats the Republicans have to hold this time versus how many the Democrats have to hold, and having our own version of Senator Mark Foley doesn't make Ensign's job any easier.  

Senator Craig, if you watch his statement today, is still trying to cover something up.  He doesn't appear to have learned anything. He's running the Bill Clinton crisis management play, except he doesn't have the charisma to pull it off, and the media certainly isn't on his side to help downplay it.  Alternative media broke the scandal about Bill Clinton and the intern, but even when the media did finally report on the details, it still did so with the spin that private life should be different from public life.  What Bill Clinton did then was something disqualifying of public office.  Larry Craig's behavior, regardless of what he pled down to, is just as disqualifying. And he's not going to have the media on his side to try and dampen the level of criticism like they did in the Clinton matter.  

If Craig had really done nothing wrong as he stated again in his statement today, he would have recounted exactly what did or did not take place in that restroom, exactly what he was charged with, how long the process between when he was charged and when he pled, and stood there fielding every question the press had for him.  If he's truly innocent, a prospect increasingly hard to believe, he should having nothing to hide and his political career depending on him coming clean with the voters of Idaho.  

Senator Craig complained about a witch hunt and viscious treatment by the Idaho Statesman in their doggedness about reporting stories about Senator Craig.  What Senator Craig did not do in today's statement is stop the death of a thousand cuts that awaits him in future editions of the Statesman that's going to make him completely ineffectual and utterly unelectable by next November. 

So where do the Senate Republicans go from here? First, in Senatorial terms, the Republican leadership threw Larry Craig under the bus Tuesday by immediately calling for the matter to be referred to the Senate Ethics Committee, which considering all the alleged collegiality in the upper chamber, is a fairly radical move.  The last two times I believe it's been done before was in 2002, when Robert Torricelli was referred to the Ethics Committee over bribery implications.  Before that, back in 1994, Republican David Durenberger was implicated in unethical behavior concerning outside income, was referred to the Senate Ethics Committee, was disbarred for his actions, and did not run for re-election.  So a referral like today's to the Senate Ethics Committee, based on previous examples, does not seem to bode well for Senator Craig's future in the Senate.

While it may be a while before another Republican Senator speaks publicly about Senator Craig, or calls for his resignation, look for one Senator, if not more, if Craig remains stubborn and returns to Washington in September, to play hardball with him behind the scenes and help show Senator Craig quickly and quietly to the door.

With General Petraeus coming to the Hill to discuss serious matters like what we do or not do in Iraq for the next six months, it doesn't seem fair to the General, the troops in the field, or Americans concerned about this debate to try and conduct it in an environment where there is an ongoing circus involving an egotistical Senator bent on protecting a busted political career.
 
Senator Craig can stop the stories, stop the Ethics inquiry that's sure to embarrass him further, and stop the humiliation of an almost sure defeat in Idaho next November.  It all stops for him if he resigns immediately, something Larry Craig, unfortunately, did not do Tuesday afternoon in Idaho.   
 

The Los Angeles Times this morning has a large spread reporting on a private report coming to George W. Bush shortly from outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Peter Pace calling for a troop reduction in Iraq sometime next year.  The Times even runs the sub-heading as,  

Advice by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs poses a potential clash with supporters of the buildup.

 When linked to the comments yesterday by Republican Senator John Warner and Democratic presidential candidates, the Times is saying this dissention in the general ranks, Pace and Petraeus, could be “awkward for Bush,” as though this were the first time in history that generals may have disagreed on anything important.  But the Times is incorrect to compare what Senator Warner said yesterday and what General Pace is reported to be working on today. 

Yesterday, I explained how ridiculous of a position it was for John Warner to “break ranks” with the President when he called for Mr. Bush to pick a number, any number, a token reduction in forces by Christmas to send a message to the Iraqi government that we’re not going to be there forever.  What is most silly about this logic is that Warner is assuming that there is an Iraqi in authority anywhere that doesn’t realize we’re not going to be there forever.  Even David Petraeus, the U.S. and coalition forces commander in Iraq, said the surge is not permanent and we cannot sustain a presence in Iraq on a large scale forever.  Picking a token number to try to prove a point is dumb when the point Warner’s trying to make is well known. But his criticism is vastly different than that of Peter Pace.  

General Pace is in a much different position than General Petraeus.  Petraeus’ job is to implement the surge and govern the military activities in that theater of operations.  Pace’s role is more of a big picture role, analyzing potential threats all over the globe, and calculating and predicting where, when and if military force might need to be used in the future, and how best to prepare, plan and equip for those threats.  By Pace allegedly saying in the Times story that he is going to report to the President that U.S. forces should be cut in half by next year, he is making that in the context that he wants the U.S. armed forces to be able to respond to other areas, possibly Iran, possibly others if necessary, a prospect that would be much harder to do with the current numbers in Iraq.  He is clearly not saying anything about Iraq failing or the surge failing, or Petraeus failing.   

In actuality, both Petraeus, in his report this September, and Pace may be right.  Petraues may try to claim that improvements on the ground in Iraq suggest that we keep the surge going for up to a year, and Pace may be correct that rotations are such that we need to begin the pulldown about the same time.  But in any case, that call belongs to one person, George W. Bush as the commander-in-chief.   

The National Intelligence Estimate that was released this week gives their assessment to events on the ground in Iraq since their last estimate in January.  The conclusion is that progress is marginally better than January, and that the surge should continue, because to alter the plan now would be to destroy any gains that have been made.  The estimate in January was a snapshot then, just as the one this week is now.  The net difference between January and now is a net marginally positive effect, but my assessment would be that if you had one estimate every quarter, it would have gone something like this.  January, disaster.  March, more of a disaster.  June, about the low point, but troops are beginning to flood the zone as the surge begins to be implemented.  Now, much more of an improvement from June.  If conditions on the ground continue at roughly the pace of the last three months from now until summer, we may very well be in a position to be able to safely reduce the amount of troops.  If the situation deteriorates, then we certainly reassess our position and strategy there. If things stay static, then it’s a tricky call, but again, Bush must then decide whether it’s still in our best interest to tread water with that many troops still in Iraq.  But the conditions on the ground support the view that things will continue to improve by the summer, giving options to begin to handover areas to a more stable local government or capable Iraq Security Force.  As for the political progress at the national lever, nature abhors a vacuum, so if the conditions on the ground continue to improve to the point where a central government becomes essential to take the next step, one will probably take shape, whether it includes al-Maliki or not.  

So before the L.A. Times tries to put Peter Pace in the same anti-war, defeatist column as the Democrats, maybe they might spend a little bit analyzing what his role is, and maybe look at the conditions on the ground and the trends for the future.

Photo by Palomino

The senior Senator from Virginia held a press conference earlier today to talk about his recent 2 day trip to Iraq with fellow Armed Services Committee member, Carl Levin.  He made news by calling for a token withdrawal of troops by Christmas of this year, a stance that few observers of foreign policy have taken seriously.  What some people might generously call nuance in Senator Warner's position, others might call talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Whle saying he didn't support the Levin measure requiring a date certain withdrawal of U.S. forces, he also said, 

I think no clearer form of that than if the President were to announce on the 15th, that in consultation with our senior military commanders, he's decided to initiate the first step in a withdrawal of our forces. I say to the President respectfully, pick whatever number you wish. You do not want to lose the momentum, but certainly in the 160,000 plus, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones by no later than Christmas of this year.

But he also added this.

Let the president establish the timetable for withdrawal, not the Congress.

So which is it?  He wants the President to pick a number, any number, and start drawing down by Christmas.  While I appreciate the sentiment, we're in a war, not a lottery.  Who does Senator Warner think he is playing games with troop rotation to try and make a point to the Iraqi government?  Does he think the Iraqi politicians won't see this as the hollow stunt that it is? How does the Senator think this will play with the troops?  How can you cherry pick which 5,000 get to come home for no other reason than to try and make a political statement?  What's that going to do for the morale of the rest that didn't get chosen?  It's a silly idea by a Senator whose time in the sun has passed. More Warner:

We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action.

Decisive action like telling the President to pick a number, any number of troops to begin withdrawing?  What kind of decisiveness is that?  At what point does General Petraeus, the guy trying to carry out the plan in Iraq, have anything to say about a Senator trying to convince the President to make his job a wee bit harder by beginning to squeeze him of troops?  The drawdown of troops is going to happen.  Everyone knows it.  Everyone has said it's coming. But you're being foolish if you casually throw a date out there that has nothing to do with the careful evaluation of conditions on the ground in Iraq.  Several years ago, Senator Warner might have known better, too.  But now, his comments are showing he's not serious anymore to the right, and he's being touted by the left as now being the latest GOP defection to President Bush.  He got nothing more accomplished with his statements today than giving the left more ammo to continue their march towards defeatism.

Paging Tony Snow, the United States Senate is calling. Virginia needs you. Our troops need you. America needs you. 

Photo courtesy of Palomino

Ever since the first of the year, Democrats, particularly the ones in the United States Senate, have been all over the map in their comments about the war in Iraq. Comments have ranged from 'we need more troops' to 'we need to withdraw immediately', from 'the surge is not working' to 'General Petraeus is a disappointment', even said at a time when the surge had not even been fully implemented.
 
Now that the surge is appearing to produce its designed effects, namely providing a secure environment in which the political reconciliation process can begin from the ground up, Democrats here have moved the goalposts in their rhetoric, seizing on the most lagging of indicators of success, the political process at the national level, as the reason we need to declare defeat and get out of there.  Wednesday morning, George W. Bush gave an impassioned speech to the national convention of the Veterans for Foreign Wars.  For the first time since the war began, the President quantified the capture or kill rate in Iraq as averaging 1,500 per month since January. 

It was a serious speech, a well-received one by the audience at the VFW Convention, and a welcome one for supporters of the war effort, because the President finally articulated information that hadn't been readily available in recent months.  One of the reasons Americans catch ESPN is because they want to catch up on the scores of their team and see how they're doing.  When it comes to the war on terror, many Americans have soured on the war, according to the polls, because they're not getting the updates they need to stay interested in it.  When MSM only reports the losses U.S. forces are taking every day, Americans have felt like their team is on a long losing streak, and they naturally find something else to do with their time.  The President needs to continue to give these kinds of speeches, and go into more detail about what is going on, where we could use improvement, and how Americans can continue to help support our brave men and women.

Which brings us to the Three Stooges of the United States Senate.  Just a short time after Bush's speech, CNN put up on the screen the knee-jerk reactions of Senators Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Harry Reid.  Here's Hillary's comment.

The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution to the situation. It has failed to do so.

I'm sure glad the French didn't tell us you've got a week to get your new government up and running, or we're out of here, and it's between you and the British on your own.  That might not have worked out so well for the founding of the United States.  And by the way, did that whole Bosnia thing get turned around in three months after U.S. forces were sent by Bill Clinton?

The surge got up to full strength around the end of June.  So according to Hillary Clinton, if the surge didn't completely pacify the country in three months and the government had reconciled, too bad, you had your chance, too late?  How idiotic of a position is that to take?  Can you name any country that is in the middle of a jihadist-induced sectarian war where you can stop the violence and stand up a government in three months? Of course not.  It's silly to use that kind of a time restraint as a way of scuttling the surge, because the surge plan had never proposed that that much progress could happen that fast.  Hillary knows that, but she's still trying to position herself with her lefty base in the primary, while maintaining her illusion as a centrist in the general election next November. Now we go to Ted Kennedy.

...political reconciliation continues to elude Iraq’s leaders.

Yes, Senator, and sobriety apparently continues to elude you, too. Look at the progress of the Democratically-controlled United States Senate this year.  Have they gotten their comprehensive immigration bill passed, the one that they spent much of the first seven months working on? No.  And that's just one piece of legislation. And there were no ied's to avoid on the way to work left by Iranian Quds forces.  You were a secure environment in which to negotiate, and yet seven months in, you couldn't solve one issue.  And yet you expect anyone to take you seriously that the Iraqi leadership should be faulted becuase it didn't go from insurgent war to pacification and functional government in three months?  Now let's hear from Harry Reid, a national political leader so feckless he makes al Maliki look positively Jeffersonian. 

It is time to change direction in Iraq, and congress will again work to do so in the fall.

Ah, the old off tackle running play in the Democratic foreign policy playbook. Change direction in Iraq. I wonder if Reid would be interested in taking a little survey of the locals in Ramadi and Baquba to see if they like the current change of direction in Iraq since the surge got to full strength, or if they'd like to pursue the kind of change of direction Harry Reid has in mind, the kind of change in direction that has occurred recently in Basra after the Brits bailed out?  My guess is probably not.  The phrase 'change of direction in Iraq' probably has polled well in the past for the Democrats, so regardless of what happens, good or bad, Reid will continue to blindly use those words, because that's all he's got to offer.  

As for the rest of his sentence, he's telegraphing that the Democrats will indeed ignore the September report from General Petraeus, the man they voted unanimously to send to Iraq to implement the same surge of which they are now trying to discount its success.  While Reid may be saying this to appease his fringe base, he is running into another trap, because as time goes by, and conditions on the ground in Iraq continue to improve, Republican resolve should continue to strengthen.  Mitch McConnell beat Harry Reid twice already this year on precipitous withdrawal resolutions when the chips were down in Iraq. Now that things are looking better in Iraq, don't expect Reid, Clinton or Kennedy to have their defeatist wishes granted anytime soon.

We have been fortunate enough over the last month or so on the Hugh Hewitt Show to interview about a dozen serious players from either the Bush administration, the military, war correspondents or foreign policy experts from all political stripes about the progress of the surge in Iraq. One of the questions that Hugh has posed to most if not all of them is how many bad guys have we killed in Iraq, in order to get a little perspective on how our forces are doing.  The standard reaction Hugh has received has been that the military doesn't want to put those kind of numbers out there as the only benchmark of success, fearing a Vietnam-style bounty being put on body counts.  While I respect that concern, the mere fact that the military commanders are cognizant of that tells me that the military institution as a whole has instilled that down to the front line officers so that Vietnam doesn't happen again.

President Bush gave a hugely important speech today to a gathering at the Veterans Of Foreign Wars National Convention, and this passage made us sit up and take notice.



An average of 1,500 bad guys a month have been killed or captured since January, or roughly 12,000 bad guys year to date.  That certainly is a remarkable achievement.  But there are definite questions that have to be answered in order to determine how strong of a metric of success this is. 

Do we have any intelligence of how many foreign fighters or insurgents there were in Iraq in January?  Do we have any reasonable estimate as to their numbers now?  Have the coalition and Iraqi forces been able to gain control over the borders in order to stem the flow of foreign fighters coming into Iraq?  Do we have any idea of the ratio of foreign fighers to Iraqi insurgents now as opposed to in January?  

The White House should be encouraged to release more of this kind of information, and answer some of the natural follow up questions in order to give the American people a truer picture of how the war in Iraq is progressing, rather than let the mainstream media just trickle U.S. body counts night in and night out.  The more Americans hear about what is really going on, the more likely they are to disregard the defeatist spin being fed to them by Democrats in Congress and in MSM.