Say Anything Blog

Huh?

WASHINGTON (CNN)—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended calling the war in Iraq “lost” in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.

“General Petreaus has said the war cannot be won militarily, he’s said that,” Reid said. “And President Bush is doing nothing economically, he’s doing nothing diplomatically, he’s not doing anything even the minimal requested by the Iraq Study Group, so I stick with General Petreaus. I have no doubt the war cannot be won militarily and that’s what I said last Thursday and I stick with that.”

His comments have triggered angry backlash from the White House and a number of Republican congressmen. Some have said that his comments send the wrong message to the troops.

“I do what I think is right, and I think this war is headed in the wrong direction,” Reid said. “And I’m going to speak out as often and as regularly as I can.”

Reid has been an outspoken critic of the president, calling him a loser and a liar in the past.

“I don’t back off that at all,” he said. “So if you say something that is untrue to me and in the right circumstances, I will call you a liar. I have no regret having called him a liar, because he lied.”

Funny that Reid would call Bush a liar, when Reid himself is mischaracterizing Gen. Petraeus’ comments about military victory in Iraq so egregiously that it rises to the level of a despicable lie.  Here’s a statement from General Petraeus that more accurately characterizes his position on Iraq (given during a US Armed Services Committee hearing on 1/23/2007):

It is, however, exceedingly difficult for the Iraqi government to come to grips with the toughest issues it must resolve while survival is the primary concern of so many in Iraq’s capital.  For this reason, military action to improve security, while not wholly sufficient to solve Iraq’s problems, is certainly necessary. And that is why additional U.S. and Iraqi forces are moving to Baghdad.

And then there’s this exchange between Gen. Petraeus and Senator McCain during the same hearing:

SEN. MCCAIN: “Suppose we send you over to your new job, General, only we tell you that you can’t have any additional troops. Can you get your job done?”

GEN. PETRAEUS: “No, sir.

So Reid is telling us that he’s “sticking” with General Petraeus, but Petraeus is saying that we need to send more troops into Iraq to take pressure off the Iraqi government so it can do the things it needs to do to secure the country and encourage economic development, etc.

If Reid truly were “sticking” with Petraeus he wouldn’t be saying that the war is lost, he wouldn’t be working with his fellow Democrats to withhold war funding from our troops and he certainly wouldn’t be calling for our troops to come home.  Unfortunately, Reid isn’t “sticking” with Petraeus.  Instead he’s invoking the good General’s name and twisting his words in order to camouflage his own defeatism and backstabbing.

It’s pathetic.  It really is.