By Cernig
It's the beginning of Petraeus' confirmation hearings on the Hill today as the Bush administration nominee to head CENTCOM in the wake of Admiral Fallon's messy departure. Not that you'll be hearing much about it from the War party, I suspect - because their nominee has chosen to appear on Ellen and do some fundraising instead of attending the hearings. I guess they could try to spin that as McCain being just sooooo good and so serious on national security issues that he had no need to attend.
But there's some interesting stuff coming out of the Senate Armed Services Committee session even without McLame's presence - as IIan Goldberg, liveblogging, relates:
Jack Reed finally brings up the gorilla in the room. He asks Petraeus if he agrees with the intelligence community and Chairman Mullen's assessment that the next terrorist attack on the United States would most likely come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.
Petraeus says YES.
And Reed naturally asks, then why does the campaign plan focus on Iraq not Afghanistan and Pakistan? Reed also asks how Petraeus would plan to actually bring more troops into that area, since they're all in Iraq.
The WaPo notes, too, that Petraeus written statement in advance of the hearings was a reminder of how Iraq was made into such a tarpit.
Petraeus's answers on Iraq reiterated much of his testimony last month. Asked what he thought were the "most significant mistakes the U.S. has made" in Iraq, his lengthy list included: erroneous prewar assumptions; a misplaced emphasis on early elections that resulted in "hardened sectarian positions"; slow adjustment of U.S. strategy to security challenges; failure to recognize the negative impact of the Iraqi government's slow political reconciliation; and U.S. misconduct at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere that "inflamed the insurgency and damaged the credibility of Coalition Forces in Iraq, in the region, and around the world."
And yet McCain decided to skip what is arguably the most important job a committee he's a member of will do this year. That doesn't fill me with confidence that he'll learn from past mistakes of arrogance and incompetence.
(Spencer Ackerman's doing some great liveblogging of the hearings too.: -)
No comments:
Post a Comment