On Sep 11, 2007, at 9:11 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, led his wife through the throng to meet the great man.
"What
a pleasure! What a pleasure!" Lantos called out.
The lawmakers used their allotted questioning time to heap linguistic
laurels on the visiting general, and, to a lesser extent, U.S.
Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker: "America's finest. . . . Our nation's
most capable. . . . The capability, the integrity, the intelligence
and
the wisdom. . . . Nothing but admiration."
Actually, rolling over and playing dead would have been an improvement.
No doubt they'd read the NYT poll showing the American public
trusting the military far more than the President or Congress on
Iraq. So much for civilian control of the military. But an ABC poll
released the day before said that people were deeply suspicious of
Petraeus's report, thinking that he was going to say what the
administration wanted to hear. But the Dems didn't want to play to
that, for the obvious reasons.
Doug
