Petraeus hearings

I have not seen much of the footage of General Petraeus' latest venture to Capitol Hill. The parts I have viewed were sickening. Not the General, mind you; he is a hero. I don't care what you think of the war and its success level; General Petraeus is to be commended for his courage and determination.

Joe Biden, Carl Levin and Ted Kennedy make me want to spit nails. How DARE these pompous jerks pontificate and posture for the cameras at the expense of the troops? I know it's ostensibly because they feel the war is a lost cause. Fair enough; plenty are making that argument these days, but Biden was so disrespectful to Ryan Crocker, the Ambassador to Iraq, telling him that "no one, NO ONE, believes that we're surging diplomatically", whatever that is supposed to mean. Chris Matthews rolled this clip tonight on Hardball with such fanfare that you'd have thought it was the latest utterance from Maimonides, Gandhi and Confucius all rolled into one, and then brought Biden himself on to bloviate about it some more.

Barack Obama espoused similar skepticism in his comments to Petraeus, but I felt, to his credit, that he was respectful about it, at least the portions that I saw. Hillary was so subdued in her tone that she sounded like she's been getting speech coaching from Tom Daschle and Bob Casey, Jr. She's been cultivating this tone for the last week or so now; is this the newest version of HRC?

As I alluded to earlier, expressing skepticism about the effort in Iraq is one thing. Ridiculing a sitting 4-star general is another, altogether. Count me in as officially turned off and disgusted by this despicable conduct.

I was very impressed by Sen. John Warner, hardly a budding conservative, though certainly a loyal Republican. What a gentleman. He gave Petraeus at least two chances to answer the question about whether or not America is better off because of the war and the subsequent surge effort. Also very admirably, I think, because it is not his duty to render judgment on this query, General Petraeus declined to offer more than his opinion that it was worth it. Well, he isn't a pundit; he's a military man. What more can he do?

More on this later; we head for Alaska Friday morning and I plan to blog extensively over the next 2 1/2 weeks.