Posted by: McQ on Monday, September 10, 2007 Yes friends, I've now made it through almost 5 hours of House testimony from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker before the combined members of the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. I have been struck by two things. Both Petraeus and Crocker seemed exceedingly well prepared to face these committee members. Either that or the committee members were woefully unprepared to question them. What most members were prepared to do is make statements which essentially staked out their position on the war in Iraq. And many of them spent their 5 minutes doing exactly that. That left me thinking that for all of the information that Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker related, it really didn't matter. A good number of them really weren't there to listen. When questions were asked they were, in many cases, so uninformed that I'd have been embarrassed if I'd have asked them. The one that comes immediately to mind was asked by a Congressman from Mississippi. He said that when he was in Gen. Petraeus' headquarters in Iraq, he didn't see any Iraqis in there and if the purpose of the Surge was to prepare the Iraqis to take over, where were they? Heh ... Petraeus patiently explained that their headquarters of the same level (HQ for Iraqi Ground Forces) was right across the street from his and that both headquarters (as would always be the case) have liason officers in each other's headquarters. That's not to say that there weren't any good questions asked, but if anyone thinks this was a grilling by well prepared politicians bent on getting at the "truth" about the situation, you need to disabuse yourself of that notion. Now this may get more intense, better focused and better informed when the Senate takes its crack at them in two separate hearings. But I've got to tell you, I was totally unimpressed with the questioning today. I found myself answering questions outloud for Petraeus while I listened. My answers were nowhere as diplomatic as his. As a final point, I would guess Petraeus did approximately 70-80% of the talking when questions were asked while Crocker did about 20-30% of the talking. Yet it is Crocker's area where we will supposedly achieve success. Seems to me if you're interested in success in Iraq, you'd be hammering Crocker and trying to get answers. |
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