Senators who want to be generals

David Limbaugh:

I thought President Bush has been lying to us about our troop requirements in Iraq and that the generals were too afraid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to contradict his claim that we had enough troops. Isn't that what the critics have been telling us? Well, Rumsfeld is on his way out and the generals are telling Congress that he and Bush have been telling the truth all along.

Our lofty politicians say we should never politicize the war, yet the 2008 presidential frontrunners of both parties, Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, did precisely that as they each tried to use Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Mideast, as an unwitting prop to launch their respective campaigns. I guess this is an example of the "bipartisanship" we can expect from the new Congress.

Unfortunately for these Oval Office aspirants, Abizaid didn't succumb to their shameless grandstanding or defer to their simulated senatorial sagacity, but took them both to the woodshed when they tried to manipulate him during his Senate testimony into supporting their differing positions on the war.

McCain was visibly frustrated with Abizaid's refusal to bow to his imperious wisdom that we should have more troops on the ground in Iraq. Other senators questioned whether we had too few troops.

Abizaid's response, which left some stupefied, was reminiscent of a scene from the movie "Amadeus." When the Austrian emperor criticized Mozart's piece as having "too many notes," Mozart replied, "No, your Excellency. It has just the right amount of notes: not too many, not too few." So it was with Abizaid to McCain and Clinton: "There are neither too many troops, nor too few troops, but, all things considered, approximately the correct number of troops."

...

This debacle happened because too many in the media have not been paying attention to what Abizaid's strategy really is and instead have focused on politicizing the war by blaming Bush and Rumsfeld for the strategy. To a large extent this political fraud has worked, in that the Democrats won an election based on the fraud. But at some point the reality of the strategy had to be debated out in the open and the senators were embarrassed by their ignorance. They can think the Cobra II and Fiasco mentality of media for their ignorance. It is now time to have an honest debate over Abizaid's strategy, but it is unlikely that anyone speaking on behalf of despair will be prepared for that debate.