Forget most Democrats, some Republicans are making a show of "standing up" to the President by making more useless and redundant demands. Take Senator Pat Roberts, for instance
"I don't think this war can be sustained for more than six months if in fact we don't see some progress," Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said Wednesday. Until this month, he was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Gee, you would imagine the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be aware that the reports the Administration already provides Congress as per the section of the House Conference Report 109-72 accompanying H.R. 1268 section entitled “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq”.
The same goes for Senate Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio who said
he wants to create a bipartisan panel to oversee Bush's Iraq plan and track its success by setting benchmarks and monitoring progress.
"It's substantive, it's not one of these nonbinding resolutions," Boehner said.
The last Quarterly Report, for instance, includes
It would seem that one could use this metric to see if the new strategic plan in Iraq is working. If the three bars on the left are reduced in magnitude, that would mean things are improving.
Here's another metric being tracked
So too, if the four bars above went green like the others, that would also indicate improvement.
Now one of the "metrics" these Republicans and Democrats like Senator Clinton talk about has to do with the capability of Iraqi forces. This too is already being tracked
It would seem that more and more, the requirements demanded by Congress, with regards to Iraqi's taking more and more of the responsibility for the fight is being met. But Congress also needs to remember that a capable fighting force is not built overnight. The backbone of any military is it's NCO corps and it takes between 5 and 10 years to get capable NCOs no matter how efficient your training program is.
But Senators Roberts, Boehner and Clinton would have to agree that Iraqi forces are heading in the direction they demand and we require.
The reporting process has much more in the way of metrics. Certainly all of the areas covered should be enough for any Congressman to use to measure the progress and effectiveness of Bush's new plan. So it seems to me, anyone calling for metrics is just being political.
And in this case, being political is also being detrimental to the effort: and impediment to victory for political expediency.
And I, for one, will not forget those who put themselves before out country.
Because after all, you would be asking me to give you a chance to serve our country while what you are doing is showing me you are not worthy.
You want an example of one I think you should emulate, take a look at Sen Lieberman. Even when it looked like he was in political trouble, he did not waver in his belief that we need to fight the Islamists and succeed in the War in Iraq.
And notice that he won anyway.
That's political courage, Senator Hagel.
Take note.
