Chris Dodd for President

Steve Benen writes about the result of the questioning of Petraeus and Crocker by Congress:

There was some sense, on the blogs and elsewhere, that Petraeus would dazzle lawmakers and the media, forcing complacent Dems to back down into complacency. That, fortunately, has not happened. Petraeus and Crocker apparently haven’t change any Democratic minds. Dems came into the week skeptical, and come out of the hearings with very little reason to embrace the president’s policy.

Skepticism may have been maintained, but unless that skepticism is borne out as vocal leadership to end the war and immediately start bringing troops home, I'm not prepared to say Benen is right that Democrats have maintained a strong front in opposition to Bush's failed policy. Skepticism has not produced leadership to end the war nor has it lead Democrats to stand up and say now how they will vote on Iraq funding legislation if it fails to include a firm, enforceable deadline to bring the troops home.

The larger point is that there is a vast gulf between opposing Bush's Iraq policy and taking actions to ensure that the policy is put to rest in the graveyard of failed ideas that has marked this presidency and cost our nation dearly.

To that end, I do agree with Benen when he writes, "In other words, despite all the build-up and anticipation, we’re where we were in May. It feels a little anti-climactic, doesn’t it?"

The climax is yet to come. The upcoming debate on Iraq war funding is where Congress can put an end to our involvement in Iraq's civil war. Other Senate Democrats, notably presidential candidates Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, need to stand up and state their opposition to any legislation that fails to set a date certain tied to funding for having our troops out of Iraq. Senator Dodd is leading. The others are absent. We will only change from where we were in May when other Senators join Dodd in voicing their opposition to the war loudly and with clarity.

Call on your Senators to make their position clear -- visit http://chrisdodd.com/StopTheBill

This exchange yesterday between General David Petraeus and Republican Senator John Warner tells us all we really need to know about the Bush administration's failure to make America safer through its policy in Iraq:

SEN. WARNER: I hope in the recesses of your heart that you know that strategy will continue the casualties, stress on our forces, stress on military families, stress on all Americans. Are you able to say at this time, if we continue what you have laid before the Congress, this strategy, that if you continue, you are making America safer?

PETRAEUS: Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objections 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 Multinational Force in Iraq.

It's a tragedy that the question of whether or not our strategy of escalating the presence of US forces in Iraq's civil war will make us safer was asked before we put it into action. As a result we've seen the bloodiest summer since we've been in Iraq and no noticeable political progress.

Steve Benen notes, "This wasn’t a trick question. If we’re fighting a war, conditions are dismal, and hard-to-predict success won’t improve our national security, then it reinforces the idea that maybe, just maybe, we should get the hell out of there."

Now, in fairness to General Petraeus, he later backtracked away from his statement about not knowing "if success in Iraq would make America safer." This lack of clarity by Petraeus, though, speaks to the failure of the Bush administration to produce a strategy in Iraq that is concretely directed towards making America safer. Forgetting the company line for a few moments -- even to remember it later -- is a startling admission of this failure. And the results of this failure are clear: we are less safe, less secure, and have lost our moral standing in the world.

It's time to end the war and Senator Dodd is leading to do just that.

Update:

Here's Senator Dodd's statement in response to Petraeus' answers to Senator Warner:

"General Petraeus' answer says it all. If we are not sure our involvement in this civil war is making us safer, why are we there at all," said Dodd. "As I've said before, it is useless to debate the merits of a particular tactic when the underlying policy is a complete failure. I call on my colleagues to do what needs to be done to end our involvement in this civil war and help restore our national security by clearly and directly declaring that they will not support any Iraq measure without a firm, enforceable deadline tied to funding for the completion of redeployment of troops from Iraq."

Earlier today Senator Dodd questioned General David Petraeus about the statistics he is using to describe the level of violence in Iraq. You can watch the whole exchange here, but here's a partial transcript.

DODD: There's a lot of debate-obviously there have been reports about the data and methods used for securing the number of statistics we’re going to deal with here regarding the level of violence in the area. I noted on the chart, General, that you showed, I think on the first page – I wanted to ask you to put it back up - it shows the chart of the violence. I'm just curious. It shows here actually the surge begins really around February 1st of 07 on the chart. The numbers seem to come down. They’re already down from the high mark earlier. Am I misreading that?

PETRAEUS: No, that is absolutely correct. In fact, there was actually quite a substantial drop in the month of February just with the announcement of the Baghdad security plan. In fact, a number of, we think, Shiite militia elements took a knee for a while to sort of sort out. I think they didn’t realize that we did not have more than just the initial brigade on the ground. But there’s question that the ethno-sectarian violence had crested really in December and was headed down at that time, although still at very, very high levels.

DODD: Ok, again, I don’t want to – because we can go around and debate the statistics here back and forth. The GAO obviously has a different set of conclusions and others who argue about how well the surge is working in terms of the level of violence. But the whole purpose of it, of course, as you’ve been stating and the ambassador has is creating that space for the political process to move forward. We’ve lost some seven hundred troops, another forty-four hundred I think have been injured in the time-frame we’ve been there in the past eight or nine – the past eight months or so.

Senator Dodd has an op-ed on the Huffington Post. The article is titled, "Is Today's Testimony from Petraeus Relevant to the Debate on Iraq?" In it Dodd questions "the relevance of a report on the merits of a particular tactic when the underlying strategy - that there is any military solution to the civil war in Iraq - has failed."

Read the whole post on Huffington Post or go below the fold for more.

Today's Washington Post has an article on General Petraeus' testimony before the House of Representatives yesterday. The article is title "Petraeus Backs Initial Pullout". The first paragraph reads:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told Congress yesterday that the deployment of 30,000 more troops to Iraq has made enough progress that the additional combat forces can be pulled out by next summer, but he cautioned against "rushing to failure" with a larger and speedier withdrawal.
...
If logistics personnel and other supporting troops are also withdrawn, that would return force levels to the "pre-surge" number of 130,000 by mid-July.

There are currently 160,000+ US troops in Iraq. There were just over 130,000 troops in Iraq when the escalation of troop presence began this past winter. There is a cap of 15 months for troops to be deployed into Iraq (though they can't be maintained longer than this April according to Secretary of Defense Gates). Thus the Pentagon has no choice but to draw down the additional 30,000 troops by next summer. I tend to agree with the NY Times editorial board's assessment of Petraeus' representation of the meaning of this alleged "pullout":

That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity.

Petraeus is representing something that he has to do as a strategic choice signifying progress in Iraq. The Washington Post is reporting it as a concession, yet it is merely the continuation of the Bush administration's resistance to accept any course but the one they have set themselves, one which has failed to produce a political victory through military tactics for over four years.

Petraeus and his cohorts in the White House are not offering any draw down of US forces in Iraq. They have merely expressed a willingness to run our military presence in Iraq on vapors and hope to coast through the remainder of President Bush's term with 100,000 -- 130,000 troops in Iraq.

It's time to end our involvement in Iraq's civil war. It's time to start withdrawing our troops, immediately. Tonight. It's time for Congress to pass legislation that has a firm, enforceable deadline for withdrawing our troops.

Call on your Senators to back legislation that does this. Visit http://chrisdodd.com/StopTheBill to send a letter to your Senators today.

Update

The title of this post is a take-off of a recurring series by Donita Sparks on FireDogLake titled "The Spin I'm In". The technical editor for that segment, which usually includes an audio and video playlist of music for the moment is blogger Joh Padgett. Joh saw this post and has created a video playlist to correspond to this post. Check it out.