Iraq politics: Here comes the circus
Posted: Monday, April 07, 2008 9:17 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Congress, Security
The Washington Post: "When Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker travel to Capitol Hill tomorrow, they might be the ones before the microphones, but the cameras will be trained on three of their inquisitors: Sens. John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. The hearings before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees promise to be as much about presidential politics as about the past six months of military and diplomatic progress in Iraq.”
McCain's two chief allies in the Senate -- Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham -- pen an op-ed previewing the hearings in today's Wall Street Journal.
Per excerpts of his remarks today in Kansas City, McCain will say: “At the beginning of last year, we were engaged in a great debate about what to do in Iraq. Four years of a badly-conceived military strategy had brought us almost to the point of no return… Instead of abandoning Iraq to civil war, genocide, and terror, and the Middle East to the destabilizing effects of these consequences, we changed strategies. We sent to Iraq additional troops, many of them on their third or fourth tour, and a great, seasoned general to lead them, with a battle plan that, at long last, actually addressed the challenges we faced in Iraq.”
More: “Within six months, the men and women who have made such enormous sacrifices for the rest of us dramatically turned around the situation in Iraq. From June 2007 through my most recent trip last month, sectarian and ethnic violence in Iraq has been reduced by 90%… Iraq’s political order is also evolving in hopeful ways. Four out of the six laws cited as benchmarks by the U.S. have been passed by the Iraqi legislature… Much more needs to be done, and Iraq’s politicians need to know that we expect them to show the necessary leadership to rebuild their country. For only they can. The job of bringing security to Iraq is not finished.”
“But there is no doubt about the basic reality in Iraq: We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.”
The RNC has released a new Web video -- entitled “Politics vs. Petraeus” -- whacking Clinton and Obama on Iraq.
