6/23/05
Today, I went and sat in on most of the Armed Services Committee meeting. Answering questions were Gen Myers, Rumsfeld, Gen Casey, and Gen Abizaid.
Casey said the insurgents will be defeated when they see the political process as more viable. He seems to indicate that this needs a political, not a military solution. Abizaid said he sees the political process as a solution.
Levine pointed out that not meeting timetables will have negative repercussions on our troops. Levine suggests that we have some repercussions lined up for Iraqis not getting things done! (Yes, he does think the Iraqis should do "democracy" on our time schedule!) I stopped by Levine's office later in the day and pointed out the discrepancy in his remarks.
Rumsfeld said that "I do know what I think" and he sees the importance of progress on the political side. He says the insurgents realize that they will lose if democracy is established. He does not elaborate on how this can be "democracy" if we are telling them what to do.
McCain said that the worst thing we can do is set a timetable for withdrawal.
Casey says the number of attacks are the same as a year ago, against civilians and against the military. I certainly don't think this is the whole truth.
McCain asked how many Iraqi troops are ready. Casey replied that we are training Iraqi troops and putting them in charge more and more.
McCain said that he felt the men there in the armed services and Rumsfeld himself gave him confidence and hope. (I made a visit later to McCain's office to say that those people who got us into an optional war for bogus reasons and then totally bunged the aftermath do not inspire any confidence or hope in me!)
Edwards piled it on. He said we have a responsibility to get it correct, and then said we are in serious trouble with no end in sight. He reminded Rumsfeld of WMD claims and threats of Saddam's regime. He reminded him of the "stuff happens" and "you go to war with the military you have".
Rumsfeld said he didn't think there would be a guerilla war, and Edwards asked him what do you call a "suicide bomber" and then he asked him to resign. Rumsfeld said that he offered to resign twice to Bush, but Bush turned him down.
Both Rumsfeld and Casey said that Iraq is not a quagmire.
Reed mentioned a credibility gap and "erosion of trust".
Sessions claimed that all the troops involved in torture or abuse were prosecuted, and that there is no systematic abuse, and then said the fake Newsweek story is total cause of the riots and deaths in Pakistan. (Obviously, he is clueless.)
One of the generals claimed that terrorists want chemical and biological and nuclear weapons and that they will use them against us. He further stated that our enemies want people to believe that we don't respect them and that we are there to steal their resources. (Funny, but when they start going on like this, I start thinking they are really talking about themselves. That means the US military wants these weapons to use against people who they think are there to steal "our" resources - a big problem, of course, is that "our" resources are not located inside our country.)
Clinton talked about the "tone" in the Senate and in the nation.
Graham said the only way we can lose in Iraq is to leave too soon and leave the country in shambles. He said "losing is leaving before the job is done." He notes that the public is losing support for this war. In a list of what "freedom and democracy" should look like, he made comment about "mothers (should) have a say about their children". So, I stopped into his office later in the day and left copies of two news articles - one about a 10 year old who was killed in a roadside bomb and one about a 10 year old shot by US troops. I said I wanted to know what the US has done to show it's sorrow for these events and what he thinks these mothers would say about what happened to their children.
Rumsfeld said he doesn't believe in polls (remember that for the update on Iraqi polls later in the day), but he said that leadership needs to lead. (Well, I guess that was what he was saying, I have to admit I really don't know.)
Then he made a comment on how the "terrorists" want to turn it back over to darkness - that is to people who want to behead other people. I sure wish I could ask him about the deference between beheading people and dropping a bomb on them. I would like to know what the difference is for the dead people.
Graham said that the same people who want us to leave Iraq are the same people who wanted us dead on 9/11. I guess he didn't notice that the people who wanted us dead on 9/11 also dead themselves.
Rumsfeld went on to say that 18 terrorists attacked us on 9/11, and as Rumsfeld was leaving I told him there were 19 terrorists that day, not 18.
Bayh asked how do we define success? What are the benchmarks for reaching that goal? When do we decide that the country is "stable enough"? As he was leaving, I stopped him and told him Iraq was stable on March 1, 2003. WE, and only WE, are the ones who destabilized the country.
Collins then spoke and said we should put political pressure on the Iraqis. So, this is what "freedom and democracy" means to Collins: the Iraqis get to do what we tell them to do. I stopped by Collins office later in the day and pointed out the discrepancy. She had much the same orientation as Levine did earlier in the Dog and Pony Show.
Ensign when on to state that what people may say will hurt the troops and he brought up Newsweek's article on the Koran and a Senator's comments about how Guantanamo is like the Nazi camps and the Soviet gulag. I visited Ensign's office after the Dog and Pony Show and told them it is not what people say about the torture, it is what was done and who was NOT held accountable in the chain of command that is the problem.
Byrd commented that Rumsfeld likes to lecture the committee and sneer at them, like no one before him has ever done. He commented that we didn't ask enough questions before the war and that the American people have not heard enough of the truth. Byrd was great, and always has been.
I believe that the military guys passed out their information on Iraq Public Perception of the Iraqi Security Forces at this point. Over all, this looks very positive. I have no idea how they surveyed people who are not able to leave their homes safely. No data was presented on how the survey was done or any margin of error. And I guess the military believes in polls even if Rumsfeld doesn't.
Then they presented data on the Iraqi hotline tips. The number of calls has gone up significantly since ads were done on TV in April 2005. No data presented on whether these tips were useful or not. I suspect it is a great way to get another tribal member or neighbor you don't like in trouble. In spite of the increased number of tips, attacks have gone up considerably, so it appears it is not working all that well.
Dole was one of the last to speak. She commented on the show "Terrorism in the hands of Justice" which is on Iraqi TV. On that show, men who have been beaten up confess to terrorism crimes. There is no trial, no evidence, no judge, no jury - just a confession extracted after torture. She also commented on reconstruction and how the "good news" isn't getting out. (And that's because the death toll keeps going up and up and up.)
I stopped by Dole's office today also and talked to "Chris" who is supposedly her foreign affairs person. He didn't think the US has any responsibility at all for the insurgents bombs that target US troops but killed a 10 year old child. He could not understand that if we had Chinese troops in our country and a US "insurgent" set off a bomb that was directed towards them, then most of the US population would hold the Chinese army responsible for being the cause of this violence.
He thought the US troops shooting a 10 year old child was an unfortunate mistake. I left my articles about these two children with him, and my pictures of how the Iraqi people are grieving. I argued with him on the "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice" show and told him that I would confess to killing my mother if I was tortured (that would be hard to pin on me, since my mother is still alive).
Basically, in the short time I talked to him, I don't think I got anywhere. He believes that the Iraqi people want the US troops there and they are much better off without Saddam. He didn't even believe my statements about mass graves in Iraq. He said he could show me the pictures of the graves. I could show him the pictures also. Best I can figure from articles on the web, about 10-12,000 Iraqis have been uncovered from mass graves. There are still many graves sites not explored, due to the security situation. But to claim that there are 400,000 graves is most likely not accurate. I told him about the 600 mass graves in Fallujah from April 2004, seen in the movie "The Dreams of Sparrows". He said he was familiar with the movie.
And our Senators have a Dog and Pony Show as a sequel to the "Everyone is Responsible For This Mess Except Me" routine, which followed the "How Could We Know He Got Rid of The WMDs?" posturing which came after the "Let's Vote for Optional War! It's Patriotic!" game they played in the fall of 2002.
They are mainly sickening.
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