Democrats Fight At The Iraq Hearings

As the Petraeus/Crocker hearings shift to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden is doing a great job, hammering the President's non-strategy on Iraq and the costs to prestige, operational capacity, the fight against terrorism, lives and treasure. Actually, several Democrats have had fine performances today, and I wanted to highlight some of them from the Armed Services Committee session.

• Bill Nelson (D-FL) gets at the heart of the "political reconciliation" question, hitting the familiar tactic that we've seen by the Administration of highlighting initial votes passing pieces of legislation without mentioning that they never get signed into law or implemented. Worse, laws like the de-Baathification statute are being used to target Sunnis and increase sectarian tensions.

"It is with a great deal of respect and deference to you," Nelson said, that he pressed the issue: the point of the surge was to create political reconciliation. "Has political reconciliation happened?"

Petraeus: "As the Ambassador laid out, there has been agreement among different political parties on a number of pieces of important reconciliation laws, if you will, that represent reconciliation... [laws on] de-Ba'athification, a provincial powers law, a pensions reform bill..."

But have the laws been implemented?

Petraeus: I believe the pensions law is in the process of being implemented. De-Ba'athification --"

Nelson wondered: To the extent of bringing about political reconciliation "that is the goal in the first place?"

Petraeus kicked it over to Crocker.

This is a common "kick-the-can" tactic to prove some sort of ephemeral success of the surge, and I'm glad Nelson called it out.

• Claire McCaskill (D-MO) bluntly stated that Sadr won the battle for Basra, which is obviously true despite Ryan Crocker's spinning. This was buttressed by today's events, as the religious leadership in the country lined up behind Sadr, which is a complete thumb in the eye of Maliki and his call for the Mahdi Army to be disbanded.

• Evan Byah (D-IN) - yes, Evan frickin' Bayh - did a nice job of discussing the intelligence community's assessment that our presence in Iraq is actually creating more terrorists than we are defeating there. And there was this great moment:

He also wins huge plaudits from me for mentioning, in response to something Ambassador Crocker said, that "I would only caution us not to take our marching orders from Osama bin Laden."

Exactly so. It's really lunatic of hawks to keep citing OBL's desire to fight us in Iraq as a reason for us to fight him in Iraq. He likes the fight in Iraq because it's favorable terrain for his cause and his propaganda and lets him pose as the defender of the Arab world against American domination. They're suggesting we act like bulls running at the toreador's cape.

• I mentioned Jack Reed's (D-RI) questioning before, but he pressed Ambassador Crocker on a central point - that Iran is supporting all kinds of groups in Iraq, not just those "special groups" but also our "friends" in Maliki's Army like the Badr Brigade and the Dawa Party.

• Jim Webb noted as a side comment that the Anbar Awakening began well before the surge. That's something that always gets lost.

• Even Huckleberry Graham missed a layup, asking Gen. Petraeus if we could get a brigade a month out of Iraq, expecting the answer no, and Petraeus replied "It clearly would depend on the conditions at that time... that might be doable." Whoops.

I don't expect that these key facets of the crumbling of the Bush Iraq strategy will get much notice - that Petraeus and Crocker have to answer these questions instead of the policymaker-in-chief ensures that he is shielded from the consequences of his actions. But it's important to note that many Democrats are fighting to get out the truth about Iraq, and to change the debate from whether or not "we're winning" and whether our continued presence in Iraq makes sense for our economic and national security.