Petraeus/Crocker, Part II Update: Marred by protesters again
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing is underway. Sen. Joe Biden is lecturing the counterinsurgency experts about what needs to be done in Iraq.
Stand by. We’ll see if the infiltrators get away with their disruptive antics again.
Meanwhile, read this column by George Will, who will be the Left’s new hero by the end of the day.
Paul Mirengoff at Power Line does what George Will and Joe Biden fail to do: Put Iraq and Iran in context.
AllahPundit gets the headline of the morning on his post covering the hearing: “Petraeus versus the Democratic presidential field.”
9:51am Eastern. Ambassador Crocker testifies first on progress in Iraq: “The trajectory is upwards, although the slope of that line is not steep…a sober assessment, but not a disheartening one.”
10:10am Eastern. I said stand by for disruption. And there you have it. As commenter PBoilermaker notes: “Well, that didn’t take long…another Pinko getting air time.”
10:23am Eastern. Once again, a protester gets his 15 minutes of fame as Gen. Petraeus reviews cooperative efforts by Iraqi security forces.
10:30am Eastern. C-SPAN has cut away from the hearing.
10:41am Eastern. Weird. C-SPAN has resumed coverage. Grandstanding Joe Biden is haranguing Crocker and Petraeus.
10:51am Eastern. Dem presidential candidate Chris Dodd gets his turn to campaign at the mic. Funny how the microphones are always in great working order for the blowhard politicians…
11:06am Eastern. Chuck Hagel is lambasting the Bush administration for not looking at the larger geopolitical context of the Iraq war. Hagel cites the New York Times NCOs. Biden and Dodd are bobbing their heads vigorously.
11:18am Eastern. Oh, crikey. The Winter Soldier is lecturing Gen. Petraeus. The Winter Soldier is championing the same troops he thinks are stoopid.
11:54am Eastern. Sen. Russ Feingold complains that the hearing is focused only on Iraq. Guess he missed the discussion of Iran. Also: Congress wants an assessment of Iraq. Now, Feingold whines that Petraeus/Crocker are giving them assessments of Iraq. As opposed to what? Darfur?
Can’t win with these people.
12:30pm Eastern. The blowhards take a recess.
BTW. I agree with readers who are e-mailing me abou Biden’s annoying tactic: Allowing the blowhards to rant endlessly, then limiting Petraeus and Crocker’s responses because there’s not enough time. There was, however, enough time to single out a congressional staffer for applause before the break.
12:53pm Eastern. Wire coverage focuses in on GOP questioning of the witnesses:
Senate Republicans sharply challenged President Bush’s top military general and ambassador in Iraq on Tuesday in a sign that some within the GOP retain serious misgivings about the protracted war.
“Are we going to continue to invest blood and treasure at the same rate we’re doing now? For what?” asked Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who supports legislation setting a deadline to bring troops home.
The deep-seated doubt expressed at the hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reflected just how far Congress had come since the war began over four years ago. And Republican senators raised tough questions that rivaled those asked by Democratic presidential hopefuls on the panel.
The exchanges came just a day after the top U.S. war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, recommended keeping the bulk of U.S. forces in Iraq—some 130,000 troops—deployed there through next summer.
Whereas Republicans were once deferential to the thinking of officials running the war, particularly uniformed officers, Hagel and other GOP senators on the panel said they doubted that simply giving war commanders more time would necessarily yield results.
“In my judgment, some type of success in Iraq is possible, but as policymakers, we should acknowledge that we are facing extraordinarily narrow margins for achieving our goals,” said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the committee.
Sen. Norm Coleman said he appreciates plans to return troop levels to 130,000—down from the 168,000 currently in Iraq—but that he wants a longer-term vision other than suggestions that Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will return to Capitol Hill in mid-March to give another assessment.
“Americans want to see light at the end of the tunnel,” said Coleman, R-Minn.
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Like Biden has a clue on this subject? That man is so full of hot air it’s amazing he doesn’t explode. Yet another “who in the heck votes for this moron” question.
Slow Joe shoots his mouth off again without an idea of what he is talking about.
As the saying goes: Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach Administrate.
My e-mail to George Will:
Well, that didn’t take long…another Pinko getting air time.
From Will
Apparently he didn’t see the conference yesterday, as Petraeus disavowed a story similar to this in the NYT. And his second statement is just speculation, nothing more.
More from Will,
So the man who everyone says is incomparably stupid tricked us all? Or could it be that everyone one, including Saddam himself, thought he had WMDs. And supposing Saddam knew he didn’t, would he stand idly by and let Iran get nukes? Given that 1 million people died in their previous conflict my guess would be no.
And this other statement of Will’s is just stupid. If he didn’t go to Anbar, would Will be writing about the flimsiness of the gains there?
This article is just another example of how writers have gussied up opinion to look like analysis. The only facts he cites come from a WaPo article Petraeus rejects, so there’s not really much to analyze.
15 Nano seconds of shame. No fame for these clowns.
taylork
amazing logic isn’t it? … someone is being mugged and robbed and turns to run away so they get shot in the back instead of the front and now its no longer criminal it’s sectarian violence …
guess that means everyone should just stand still when they are being mugged and let the criminal shoot them from the front so it stays a crime …
wouldn’t want to misrepresent those all important Dem statistics now … would we?
Obama looks bored and distracted … he’s probably got more important things on his mind … like worrying about how much Hsu money he’s going to get caught with now that Hill is returning $850k …
THis is clearly not going to end well, but we have to figure out how to dump it in the Dems lap. I think the “betrayal of the troops” ala Vietnam line offers our best hope.
We need to keep the pressure up on these surrender monkeys. They have to pull the trigger.
Or we could just win the thing.
Michelle, it’s back on cspan why did they do that? geez.
Biden (parahprasing here)” a reduction of 600 attacks per week is not a success, it’s an improvement, but not a success.”
Can we start using this logic for all their anti-crime initiatives? And if it’s gang warfare can we start calling it secretarian violence?
Biden’s a blow hard.
I sure hope that Joe is just “Biden” time until he gets booted out of office by the voters in his district …
what an incompetent fool …
My question, DesertLover, is how has Biden stayed in office this long? It’s not like he hasn’t been a blowhard fool all along. Wouldn’t you think that after all this time, voting for a Democrat just because he/she is a Democrat without considering their qualifications and intelligence would be a thing of the past? The world is too dangerous a place for that kind of voting habit to continue. I cannot believe that anyone would vote for Biden based on intelligence. The man doesn’t have any.
Could someone please ask the dems, how Somalia is doing? Since their new government has met all sorts of internationally set bench marks I assume they’re doing quite well.
Apparently Dodd hasn’t been listening to what his dem colleagues have been saying the past few years. Respect for the armed services, my rear end.
Dodd is showboating for the nutroots.
This is strictly political theater at this point, a formality that we must endure.
These congressmen aren’t interested in hearing GEN Petraeus, they want GEN Petraeus to hear them.
The dems don’t want to debate the statistics because they have no bearing on their arguments.
They’d rather rely on polls that have huge sampling problems, like the one Dodd just quoted which asked an average of 5 people per neighborhood what they thought about the surge.
All,
I enjoy J.B.,White and he is a wonderful communicator, this is his take on what is going on. The mainsteam media would have us believe everyone is for surrender? They can’t even come up with one of their infamous polls, to prove that.
http://rattlergator.typepad.com/rattlergator/2007/09/keeping-faith-w.html
Let em talk. History will punish them while they are still alive- in shame.
Most of Congress can’t even pass a bill to keep illegals out of this country, and we are supposed to believe them when they are Monday Morning Quarterbacking?
What a bunch of….
The dems have always ruled by flimsy polls, rather than data or moral conviction. Why should now be any different?
How can they keep trying to compare all these reports, but not talk about the differences in data? Ideology has trumped all sense of scholarship and legitimate data analysis.
I bet pageant girl could point out Anbar Province before these clowns could. This day is sad enough without being reminded how Inept our Senate is.
The General’s understated response to Hagel about giving a truthful picture vice a good picture, was pretty good.
The look on Hagel’s face was pretty funny.
here come’s kerry, who “respects” the troops, right…
Well, Kerry is questioning Gen Petraeus.
Vietnam references abound. How poetic.
Oh, it’s Waffles’ time up. Awesome.
That treasonous coward, Kerry, does not deserve to breathe the same air as General Petraeus.
*spit*
kerry’s southern Iraq comments are getting thrown back in his face. Does he understand that we gave the locals complete control and that’s why the Brits are withdrawing? I thought that was a good thing. It amazes me the spin he put on that question making it look like that since the south is not under our control, that it’s out of contro, when in fact the opposite is true.
though I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked by the k-drizzle.
I remember, through reading and what I’ve seen in documentaries, movies, etc…. a time when United States Military Generals were heralded as THE authority on military actions.
You don’t see any history books or hollywood movies depicting the loud dissention of our Congressman as they threw our great Military leaders under the bus… ( except for Patton who was non-political and forced to cater to political concerns ).
This is the state of our nation – a Military which is forced to kow-tow their strategy to non-military minds in the US House & Senate.
Just an informal poll – how many think we can achieve the objectives in Iraq as defined by the Bush Administration (A self-sufficient democratic ally free of terrorist involvement)? And if so, long long will it take and what are acceptable American losses to achieve this?
Sickening isnt it. Wait till the 2:00 version jrl, you aint seen nuttin yet.
The war party cheerleaders are grasping at straws. If it took so many troops to achieve a moderate success in Baghdad, how many troops would it take to pacify the entire country in how much time and at what cost? What is winning? Eternal peacekeeping and nation building in a hostile country in which every pipeline and new public edifice built at ‘cost + corruption’ is sabotaged? This is a boon for Cheney’s corporate cronies for sure.
It would be nice and the moral thing to do to make right the unprovoked neocon/Bush invasion of Iraq for the Iraqi people, but the costs are just too great, so we’ll have to live with another Vietnam type defeat I’m afraid.
War party cheerleaders might want to review the history of colonialism, the UN Charter, and the Powell Doctrine.
I’m back at work today and am not able to watch this. Good thing because I don’t think I could stand to watch traitor Kerry spout his vile bile. The man is not fit to shine General Petraeus’ boots with his tongue. Maybe I’ll sneak over to the Base Finance Office down the hall every now then they always have the news on in the Customer Service lobby. I want to sear their treason into my memory so I now who I need to work against in the next election cycle.
New rule, if you use the word neocon, then there is no reason to listen to you.
Boomer, cspan.org has a live feed for you’re puter there at work.
It’s amazing how desperate the left is to make America fail. Any good news coming from Iraq isn’t given fair light. In fact, many denounce it. And in this case, they’ll denounce it before it’s even released.
It escapes me on why these people do this kind of thing. It’s beyond all rationale. But these are the people who control the democrat party today.
Why are Dems so obsessed with body counts?
Feingold is a tool. I hate to have him as one of my Senators.
Can you imagine Senators during WWII asking about body counts when we were losing THOUSANDS in one battle?
These democrats ARE invested in defeat. They win politically if we lose militarily. THAT is a despicable fact that America needs to realize.
PB, then the General explains it and ends with its very sad and you hear Biden in the background laughing. pathetic.
Now Biden asks for shorter answers!!!??? omg.
Boxer:
Answering her constituents when they ask how long will this war last – “It depends on who is the President and how many votes we have”
How about saying, “When we win”?
I didn’t think I heard that right, but I guess I did.
Did I miss the part where he asked for shorter “questions”, too? You know, minus all the anecdotes and theatrics. /sarcasm
Again with the body counts from Boxer and now she is justifying those bogus ABC polls.
When exactly did we start letting politicians and public “opinion” polls dictate our wartime strategy?
katieanne
Sorry I didn’t respond earlier to you … been gone and just getting back …
Looks like I missed the biggest kooks … thank god …
Someone needs to knock boxer off her soap box … what a B….
This is one of those rare instances when I pray that you’re wrong, Michelle.
Many, perhaps most of our Senators today are about as preening, self-absorbed, glory-seeking and irrelevant as their Roman counterparts after the Republic had given way to Empire. Of them, the emperor Tiberius contemptuously passed judgment:
“Men fit to be slaves.”
Our current crop of Senators has just freshened up Tiberius’ assessment by adding a few women to the mix.
What’s with asking questions in front of the cameras, but not allowing them to answer? They have to write them their answers?
So the viewing public can see these Senators bloviate and make speeches, but don’t allow the witnesses, the EXPERTS, to answer for the public to hear?
This is ridiculous.
our wonderful militarily minded senators couldn’t conduct a war against a bunch of first graders …
Boxer takes up all the time for question and answer with her stupid ramblings and leaves no time for Gen P to respond … am I the only one that thinks that was intentional so that he couldn’t rebut her absurd statements and accusations …
closest these fools ever came to a war was playing battleship … and they lost that as well …
I’d volunteer, to bad we didn’t get to hear a response, I for one dont just want to hear these blowhards grandstand.
Yeah, but according to Biden, the witnesses were taking too long to answer.
This is a farce and the Dems have no shame.
Copy that.
Boxer didn’t even ask a question, just have the leftist soliloquy.
I can’t listen to them. It makes me physically ill and angry. I read what they say and then various comments and listen to commentary. Husband worries I will have a heart attack.
These Democrats are a sad example of Americans and no matter how many excuses are made for them, I cannot in good conscience consider them patriots. You don’t wish for your country to lose a war for political reasons and still think you can be called patriotic. You cannot loathe and not support the military and be patriotic.
the house reps yesterday were asking idiot stuff as well but at least they let them answer …
I bet Boxer gets a better written response from the General than I’ve been receiving back from her on issues here in Ca. Her’s are nothing more than rubberstamped pat herself on the back rhetoric.
I think we need to take a closer look at this BBC/ABC poll that the dems keep referencing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6983841.stm
Everyone should be able to agree that the security situation is highly dependent on the neighborhood in which you live. Since these questions are related to overall levels of security, one would assume that the neighborhood a person lives in, and its subsequent security level, will affect their response.
The survey asks 2000 people from 450 neighborhoods. That means that on average less than 5 people are assessing the security situation for their neighborhoods. No one, not even Ward Churchill (okay maybe him) could suggest that a sample size of 5 can give us anything meaningful to analyze.
Furthermore, we have no idea which neighborhoods had particpants in the survey, and how many people represented each neighborhood. It could be that one neighborhood is represented by 1 response, while another may be represented by 11 responses. Even 11 repsonses is WAY too small to come to any conclusions, since 30 responses is considered the bare minimum.
Thus, the only conclusion one can draw from this poll, is that this poll is worthless.
Nice point, Aj…
Interesting how they DEMAND answers from others ( but keep asking questions when it’s not the answer to match their beliefs )….
But when a constituent asks them something, the response is a form letter.
THAT is a lack of respect for those whom they serve.
Not enough time for responses – but Biden takes up time to talk-up a congressional staffer …..
Bidet Biden …
Biden’s only useful purpose here is to act as a timekeeper.
I think I’ll start calling these folks something new … how about …
AMINOs
AMericans In Name Only
I don’t know taylork – hard to get the right time from someone whose calendar still reads September 10, 2001.
So, Desert – does that make amino acid what we all suffer from when we hear them speak?
jrl … B I N G O ! ! ! ! …
I knew someone would pick up the logic of that name …
Obama is out of his league.
Are they going to let Rosie ask Gen Petraeus if he thinks it is possible for fire to melt steel? That would make about as much sense as some of these questions.
DeMint’s questions were pretty good.
We need to highlight how Iraq’s neighbors are dropping the ball and in the case of Iran, making the situation far worse than it has to be.
We need to deal with Iran.
Biden – I’ll always suspect that anything he says or writes is plagarized.
Kerry – One of the biggest traitors this country has ever produced and never punished.
Dodd – A buffoon.
Boxer – A failure as a woman and a bigger failure as a senator.
All of the boomer aged senators are still living in the “glory” days of Vietnam as are the “peace” demonstrators of the Code Pink ilk. Always wanting the “good old days” of the 60s and 70s to return — When a Democrat was a Democrat!
Sense they like hypothetical questions I have one. If a Live Grenade were to fall on the floor in the middle of the room which person would fall on it?
iamsaved
Ironically those individuals would not have been allowed to be a part of the Kennedy era Democrat party …
aj
probably the colonel sitting behind the general …
Like I said before this is nothing, wait until later today.
Menendez and Petraeus are having a heated exchange.
Good answer dl! Glad to see you’re not sulking today.
aj … yep … gave it away at the end … new coach still has much to learn … lol
someone show senator A.Hole Menendez the door please … preferably the one that has a big first step …
That pretty much sums it up.
Yep…AP has a knack for articulating things effectively.
The last sentence is dead on.
300 million people in this country and how many showed up to protest?
I bet more people drowned in their own bathtub yesterday than showed up for that nonsense.
JLP
When does shrillery take stage?
Glacier and Kennedy at 1400.
That’s going to be a circus. I wonder if Teddy is drinking more liquid courage than usual to prep himself?
Ringling Brothers has scouts in the audience.
What’s the diffrence between the military, the Boy Scouts of America and congress?
The military is being led by competent Generals and Admirals, the Boy Scouts have adult supervision and congress is running the insane asylum.
I wonder which enemy General Petraeus admires the most. the dems or the insurgents?
Why do General Petreaus and Mr Crocker even need to be there?
I was wondering about all these ‘polls’ that the dems keep referring to about this many Iraqi’s want us out, and this many Iraqi’s think this or think that.
I even read a poll where 95% of Sunni’s think a certain way…
Tell me – how exactly do you poll citizens of a war-torn country that in many places doesn’t have electricity, phones, water, etc., and is unsafe to travel around, and come up with factual numbers that allegedly represent the entire country?
Answer:
Osmosis
Do you mean, “Osama-sis”?
Osama-sis: The process by which the goals and tactics of one’s enemy are slowly absorbed by members of one’s own side………….
Hmm, Senator Kerry questioning the good General. Just so we have some context perhaps the Senator would like to make his complete military record available for us, and will compare his to the General’s.
I think he threw it over the White House fence along with
hissomeone else’s medals…..Perfect. But you’d think anyone who discovered they were aligned with Osama would stop and think about what that might mean.
Note to the Senate – the teeny-tiny car is double-parked, please put the clowns back in, and move the vehicle away from the building…
These guys are so full of themselves I’m surprised they can even fit in their SUVs.
Wow, talk about the long road to get to Grandmas house, geez.
I heard yesterday, I think Rush brought it up, that when asked by George Stephanopolous about Osama Bin Laden’s comments that the Democrats weren’t doing enough to end the war –
Senator John F’n Kerry actually acknowledged and answered the question, defending the Democrat’s efforts.
So – let me see if I get this straight….
Our enemy – the man behind the worst attack against the United States – puts out a tape which says the Democrats aren’t doing enough to end the war – and a US Senator RESPONDS to it by defending their actions to do what he wants us to do?
A real American leader would have said something akin to “Who cares what he thinks? He’s a terrorist and a murderer, and you want me to respond to his criticism of our political efforts?”
I guess he wanted to make sure that he explained himself to the libs good friend 1/2 way round the world….
There are some real nutjobs calling into C-SPAN right now. They were introduced as Democrat, Republican and Independent, but they are all loons.