Andrew has taken up to call on Senator B. Boxer to apologize to an Administration that he calls "minimally competent". Is this the farcical equivalent of honor among thieves?
Anyway, my point is that while the Conservatives pile on liberals to be "civil", they are, once again, out of touch with a broad (and widening?) swath of America who think and react just as Barbara Boxer did (I saw her whole line of questioning). Unless, their idea of being politically in touch is to ask for apologies from this crowd ... ?
Basically, a lot of folks want to know - and yes, feel - whether the Bush Administration really, really does have a sense for the costs of this war, in both blood and treasure, because it is something that they haven't mentioned much (and it has been clear in the past that political party election imperatives trumped G.I. lives, viz. Vietnam).
Time was that people in public office, the ruling class or ruling elite, so to speak, were generally expected to have some familial ties to the military; and no, 'welfare policy' is not even close to the making of war and peace, so that blog reader's argument can be dismissed. It's no accident that many of the British royalty have done some service, for example.
Senator Boxer included herself in her critique, so it's not 100% clear that it was an ad-hominem attack. So far, neither Andrew nor his readers have addressed the quote that Boxer put up that made the centerpiece of her argument, namely, the fact that Rice testified in 2005 that there was "no doubt" in her mind that troops would be withdrawn before now. This is a problem with the entire mindset that has led and managed the public's expectations for this military effort.
p.s. Rice was 100% wrong in part of her reply. The DoD does do estimates of expected casualties (perhaps not for this operation, but in general they do). For obvious reasons, they do not release them to the public, however.
p.p.s. One broader point is that there seem to me to be a lot of Senators and Representatives who have much to apologize for. For one, did anyone else notice how all these elected officials call these hearings "critical" and indicate "nothing more important is before our country" and "the most significant foreign policy decision in 50 years", yet, for a large part of the testimony, over 50% of the seats on the Committee(s) were vacant, sometimes with just the chairman and one or two questioning representatives present?
That is before one gets to the paucity of regional understanding that was on display, with the caricature notions that some seem to have of "al-Sadr", Shia, and more.
sullylink
