Post #106

Subject: Testimony by General Petraeus

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, September 11, 2007)

SENATOR JOHN WARNER (R), VIRGINIA: Are you able to say at this time, if we continue what you have laid before the Congress here as a strategy, do you feel that that is making America safer?

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, CMDR., MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE, IRAQ: Sir, I believe that this is, indeed, the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

WARNER: Does that make America safer?

PETRAEUS: Sir, I don‘t know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind. What I have focused on and been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the multi-national force Iraq.

SENATOR RUSS FEINGOLD (D), WISCONSIN: So the question we must answer is not whether we are winning or losing in Iraq but whether Iraq is helping or hurting our efforts to defeat al Qaeda. That is the lesson of 9/11.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

As I – and others, by the way – feared BEFORE our troops went there, the Iraq War has been and remains a drain on and a diversion from the War on Terror and making us less secure as we continue to bleed, making the War on Terror – that is, the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan – longer and harder. The Iraq War itself is giving aid and comfort to the enemy – we are losing the ability to respond militarily to other threats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR JOE BIDEN (D), DELEWARE: Is it not true that the fundamental purpose of the surge, the primary purpose, political settlement, has not been met at this point?

PETRAEUS: Sir, clearly, we do not have a national-level political settlement.

RYAN CROCKER, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: There is an enormous amount of dysfunctionality in Iraq. That is beyond question. The government in many respects is dysfunctional, and members of the government know it.

SENATOR.CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: Are we going to continue to invest American blood and treasure at the same rate we are doing now? For what?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

When the witnesses urged Congress to ignore the 15 of 18 benchmarks for progress that Iraq has failed to meet:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAGEL: Those 18 benchmarks didn‘t come from the Congress of the United States. Those benchmarks came from the Iraqi government and this administration. Somehow, it‘s the Congress dictated these benchmarks. Well, we didn‘t.

PETRAEUS: The military objectives of the surge are in large measure being met.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Um, what are our military objectives? We removed the threat of WMD and Saddam – they were military objectives. Now, there are only political objectives left. And the BIG one: Drag out the dying so that George W. Bush can try to avoid responsibility for his War. That is why we fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: What I hear from you is that the American commitment is going to be open-ended, it‘s going to be open-ended into the future, and I‘m not sure the American people are willing to buy into that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The American people be damned when it comes to Bush’s way….