Your side? *poll* Sen. Graham "surge...some success" or Sen. Webb "new policy"

[Thorgrim]

Sen. Graham was adamant that the surge was working and many other signs of progress were there

Sen. Webb said that any progress wasn't related to the surge, and that his particular amendment (which failed by 4 votes to break the filibuster) to make it official policy that soldiers get 1 year off for 1 full tour

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10386260/
(This is a link directly to the Netcast)

Who do I side with? Webb, naturally, but for good reasons:

As he pointed out, the same thing happened to Truman when Congress forced him to change policy so that soldiers had a few months and were not rushed into battle...that's not micro-managing, that's setting long term policies for the military

And also as he pointed out...they are trying to have it both ways, Al Qaeda has been being rejected since at least 2005, and right after the election, even before the surge announcement, tribal members were meeting to kick them out of Ramadi

To make things even more ridiculous, they want to claim that both A) The surge caused Al-Anbar to break free, and that's why Al Qaeda has been out of there for months B) But also, the surge only started 2 weeks ago

That ofcourse it completely ridiculous...you can't say "oh a few months ago the surge work...but...also remember don't judge the surge it's only been around for two weeks"

Ofcourse this is exactly what the GOP has been setting up forever, and the "july surprise" of GOP defections was so effective because the GOP partisan hacks were going to wait until August to put on the full blitz of "Wow Iraq is so much better!"

Naturally, Gen. Petraeus serves as an underling to the President, and carries out his orders and does what the commander and chief tells him to do, and always in light that he is to help his commander's battle plans

So, whatever he finds, the chain of command dictates that unless he wants to resign, he has to follow the rules of respecting your commander and he will help the president's plan by giving an optomistic outlook

He even has personal reasons to beef up his report, because if he's replaced, he knows that whoever else is in command will do a worse job and he knows the most about counter-insurgency...so there's another benefit to be less objective

Anyway, give your thoughts

[SoFlaJDM]

excellent post

is there even a question? webb's the man