But on the same program, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said, "I cannot support sending additional troops to Iraq."
On "This Week" on ABC, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said the resolutions were "not helpful" to the new American commander, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, or "to the troops, to the Iraqis."
On "Fox News Sunday," Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a Republican presidential contender, said he was considering voting for a resolution criticizing the plan.
And per Salon's reportage, even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and the general Bush personally selected to take over from Gen. Casey have a problem with the basic command structure:
The Baghdad surge plan, announced by the president on Jan. 10, calls for the new U.S. soldiers to be embedded with Iraqi forces, who will take the lead. But while the U.S. troops would report to American officers, their Iraqi counterparts, in an apparent sop to national sovereignty, would report to Iraqi officers. The potentially disastrous result: two separate and independent command structures within the same military operation.
"I know of no successful military operation where you have dual command," McCain told Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Tuesday. Petraeus, heralded by the Bush White House as the man who would make the surge work, signaled his agreement, telling McCain, "Sir, I share your concern."
Holy cow, per the same article, even the armchair "architect" behind Bush's plan, another non-warrior theorist from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is taking his shots:
These days, Kagan, in particular, has been careful to differentiate the AEI plan from what Bush actually proposed. The AEI blueprint advocated that American and Iraqi forces should work together -- with the more competent Americans in the lead and in control. The units would operate "within a single command structure," Kagan's written plan for a surge states. "Unity of effort is essential for success in this kind of endeavor." Small wonder that Kagan said about Bush's ideas in an interview, "This is not our plan. The White House is not briefing our plan."
It's hopeless, this Bush, the accumulated and climaxed insult upon America by this would-be Royal Family.
Only an activist Democratic Congress led by such as Webb and Pelosi and Feingold and Murtha can save this country in these final two years we are now enduring.
They're even moving into the lead in foreign policy, with Speaker Nancy on tour in Iraq and now Afghanistan:
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, met with President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan leaders on Sunday, days after the Bush administration announced that it was seeking an increase in aid for Afghanistan.
Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat, also met with American military commanders. She did not speak to journalists.
Dear Lord, even with the worst child in the worst as President, can the adults through the Legislative branch re-take control?
2 comments:
The wheels are about to come off the doubletalk express.
ps: I LOVE the Pelosi in'07 shirt.
-mjr
The back of the shirt covers succession. I'd bet on Huckabee unless they can peg him early with that murderer he had released for toady political reasons.
Hillary is playing the inevitable card, but I keep wondering if she is. Barak will seem weak, I think, by comparison, and Edwards has a real shot, IMHO.
I'm wondering how late Al Gore could enter the race and still win, assuming no assassinations etc. along the way. Maybe it's already too late -- key donors and ops personnel getting so locked up (big money Hillary) that there's just no way to get in later.
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