September 11, 2007
Liveblogging The Other Senate Iraq Report Hearing
[Senate Foreign Relations hearing] [Joint House hearing]
End note. March is the new September. Petraeus has made it crystal clear he's not discussing an ultimate drawdown until that month next year. Reid and Pelosi have promised a super-charged challenge to Bush, which he is expected to ignore or squash. For now, it doesn't look like we'll get the GOP insurrection Democrats have been praying for, and we'll know for sure soon enough. Check back tomorrow for reaction from the White House and Hill. Good night.
7:33. Crocker on the spending: "It's something we have to do, because we don't have enough people in the State Department, and they [private contractors] do it very well."
7:28. The former auditor says the amount of U.S. money spent in one month in Iraq could buy health insurance for 800,000 American children. Expect to see more of that stat this election cycle.
7:22. McCaskill also wants to send Tony Soprano to Baghdad. Crocker responds, "We can facilitate. We can pressure to some degree. Ultimately, national reconciliation has to be an Iraqi process." He continues with words that both hurt and help him: "This is a long, slow, hard grind, that could become easier" in the improved security environment.
7:19. Oh thank God. McCaskill's back.
7:17. Oh golly. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, who hasn't gotten to ask questions yet, and Chairman Levin are both away for a vote. The committee is going to wait for them, and in the meantime Warner is asking follow-up questions. This really is starting to get torturous.
7:07. A parachute for fence-sitters, courtesy of Crocker. Frustrated Republicans, including Tennessee's Bob Corker it seems, want to know why U.S. officials don't simply strong-arm Iraqi politicians, Tony Soprano-style. Crocker's testimony indicates he doesn't buy into this approach, which possibly hands certain Republicans looking for a credible way to break with the administration a means to do so.
6:40. Pryor is the first lawmaker to say it today: "The goal posts keep moving in Iraq." The GOP counteroffensive will label unsatisfied Democrats irresponsible and weak-willed, yet what Pryor just said is the real reason why the standard of belief Clinton hinted at earlier is so very high. Doesn't mean Petraeus and Crocker aren't right. But it's why they're having so much trouble winning converts.
6:33. Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor: "After two days on the Hill, you two ready to go back to Baghdad?"
Petraeus, laughing: "Baghdad's never looked so good, Senator."
We're with the general -- someone send us now, please. J/k. Sort of.
6:23. If you average the performance of Iraq's security forces, which apparently range from quite excellent to totally inefficient and corrupt, you get so-so. The coalition identified training of Iraqi forces as a weakness at least three years ago, and has been at it since then. Back to the $1.2 trillion question, for about the 20th time since yesterday: Is it worth it?
6:17. Is this more ammo for Republicans? The Washington Post's Tom Ricks also picked up on the hot-and-cold way the war's critics have been greeting these witnesses. How can they tell these men they're the best for the job, but btw, we don't believe what you have to say?
6:10. Hillary Rodham Clinton comes with a shot of praise and a chaser of put-down. Petraeus and Crocker are honorable men of distinguished service but their report requires "the willing suspension of disbelief," she says. How much of that is Senator Clinton as opposed to Candidate Clinton? Lindsey Graham's made up his mind, apparently.
6:06. Cornyn rightly notes that Petraeus and Crocker have delivered some good news this week. Petraeus says the ethnosectarian cleansing that threatened to spiral out of control last year is now in a holding pattern -- the hope is, of course, that tensions will peter out, freeing U.S. forces to come home.
6:00. Texas Republican John Cornyn not only brings up the MoveOn ad again, but has brought the New York Times edition it ran in to the hearing. See our liveblog coverage from yesterday, and do a CTRL-F for the term "ice pick."
5:46. Crocker may just have one of the most difficult jobs in the world. He's laying out the effort to restore a major foreign diplomatic presence in Baghdad and secure 100-percent debt forgiveness for Iraq. He doesn't state why these goals are proving elusive, but the reasons are fairly easy to guess (instability and global consensus that the war = America's fault, respectively).
5:22. Graham again, who for a war backer gives an incredibly blunt assessment of what's ahead. The U.S. will continue to spend $9 billion a month and lose on average 60 soldiers a month this year and at least half of the next. Is it worth it? Petraeus, who has a son who may well deploy, says yes. Graham says the troops signing up agree, and so does he.
5:17. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., isn't sure if all this testimony is "Geneva Convention-compliant." Hee.
5:13. Petraeus says it's not for him to discuss optimal deployment lengths, and won't say whether a 15/15 rotation schedule would permit him to keep troop levels at about 130,000 next summer and beyond. As a commander, he wants "as many as I can get."
5:05. On Iran again: the option of more discussions is "very much on the table," Crocker says, though he has little confidence Tehran will begin behaving as if Iraq's security is in its long-term interests.
4:49. Eeeesh -- committee's back, now on C-SPAN.
4:44. Pelosi says that when the New Way Forward was announced in January, the president said he would need "30 or 60 days" to see if it would work. Either we heard her wrong, or that's just misleading. Both Petraeus and Crocker contend very strongly that an expedited withdrawal guarantees disaster, while their recommendations offer at least the hope of orderly disentanglement from Iraq. Here are your talking points, Republicans.
4:40. Dem reaction has arrived. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, fresh from a meeting with Bush: "This sounds to me like a 10-year, at least, commitment to an open-ended commitment in Iraq." She's pushing for expedited withdrawal. Appearing alongside her is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "There's no change of mission. This is more of the same." There're your talking points, Democrats.
4:37. "Happy talk," Dodd says. Isn't that a vaguely racist song from "South Pacific?"
4:34. Dem reaction preview, courtesy of Connecticut senator/White House aspirant Christopher Dodd: I see nothing new here, and I will no longer support unconditional funding for the war. [4:46. The committee is in recess; Dodd and co. are speaking to reporters in separate locations.]
4:30. Maine's Susan Collins, another emerging GOP war skeptic who hasn't completely crossed over, asks if there's been a major diplomatic offensive with regard to Iraq's neighbors, as recommended in the Iraq Study Group report. Crocker denies that efforts haven't been made, but this raises a question: How does his contention that Iran is being totally unhelpful affect legislators (we're looking at you, Barack Obama) who complain that the administration needs to bite the bullet and hold direct, high-level talks with Tehran?
4:23. Thank you, kindly Senator Levin, for the coming 10-minute +/- break. At this point, Petraeus and Crocker are basically repeating what they've said in the two prior hearings, and they look tired. If anyone out there is getting bored, here's GQ's cheeky profile of former DefSec Donald Rumsfeld to perk you up. Quickie summary: He has no major regrets, and no, he's not sorry.
4:12. Breaking news alert from CNN: Bush is going to follow Petraeus' and Crocker's recommendations and bring troop levels down to pre-surge by next summer. No shocker there. Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed is trying to get Petraeus to admit that he's "locked into" the drawdown because of the 15/12 deployment schedule.
4:06. Three members sticking with President Bush on Iraq so far: Inhofe, Lieberman and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. As expected. Warner appears to be moving completely to the other side, which is no skin off his back -- he's retiring after next year.
3:54. High praise for Petraeus from Joe Lieberman, I/D, who says the general has made significant gains "on the political battlefield." He adds that Petraeus' testimony has been unbiased and unvarnished, perhaps another nod to the "Gen. Betray-Us" movement.
3:47. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe: "The MoveOn.org ad was bad enough, I think we know who's behind that." Um... MoveOn?
3:37. West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd observes that Petraeus and Crocker seem to be placing all their bets on the new buzzword, bottom-up reconciliation, because it's the most feasible. Anyone out there convinced there will be a substantial U.S. troop presence in Iraq for a decade or more, here's your ammo.
3:31. If congressional war critics are able to revive their push to force parameters on the White House, it will be because of moments like this. After some needling, Virginia Republican John Warner gets Crocker to admit that both bottom-up and top-down reconciliation are required to stabilize Iraq. "With all due respect," Warner says of top-down reconciliation, "that hasn't happened."
3:26. Just as he did yesterday, Petraeus says he is not optimistic but "a realist" who hopes. Wow. Thanks to all the disappointment about this war, it's possible the word "optimist" has lost its currency.
3:18. Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy is pushing for answers on the baseline by which we decide to close shop and get out. Petraeus says he is hopeful because there already is oil revenue-sharing despite there being no governing law there. We don't know enough about this yet, but that could read both as a) the rival factions are able to cooperate, and b) the Iraqi Parliament is so bogged down in power-grabbing that it's forcing industry et al. to move ahead without centralized regulation.
3:12. Petraeus plans to bring in experts to puzzle through the militia problem. Translation: We don't know whether or how to force their dissolution.
3:08. Thanks, McCain, for the "soft partition" question. Crocker: "Partition in my view is not an acceptable outcome for the situation in Iraq." Why not? Baghdad, of course, which remains very much mixed. Crocker acknowledges "substantial displacement" -- as compared with the harder-edged "ethnic cleansing" -- and in both "practical and moral terms" de facto partitioning is not a good thing, he adds. There's your answer, for anyone wondering if the administration is settling for that scenario.
3:03. Crocker denies ever saying it "might be a good thing" if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government fell. Being a diplomat, he probably can't say stuff like that out loud. But is he thinking it? And if so, what are the plans for a post-Maliki government? Quick, someone get John Bolton on the horn.
3:00. Here are Petraeus' and Crocker's opening statements and data charts. We're watching on C-SPAN3.
2:55. Crocker opts to go straight to the questioning. God love 'im, too.
2:53. Petraeus is delivering his opening statement in full. As Joseph Biden would say, God love 'im.
2:33. Levin tells Petraeus and Crocker they can abbreviate their opening remarks because they've delivered them twice now. Thank you, senator.
2:27. Levin's opening remarks are basically an indictment of the way the war's been run. More than any other senator, ranking Republican McCain has laid all his chips on the "surge" strategy. He reminds everyone that he was one of the early GOP critics of the post-war strategy, a fact that may no longer matter to the supporters who abandoned him. He backs the new leadership in the Pentagon and the new plan on the ground because, like President Bush, he believes something approaching success is crucial to America's future strength and security.
The findings in the U.S. report on Iraq could be the shot in the arm McCain and his flagging presidential campaign need. But as a number of legislators noted yesterday and earlier today, the recent security gains might be too little, too late.
2:15. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin is kicking things off minutes after Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were released from a four-and-a-half-hour-long session before Foreign Relations. The skepticism we saw in the previous hearing will probably hold here, but maybe with Republican John McCain on this panel something fresh will come out of this round. Stay tuned...
Posted at 7:50 PM
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Bush Administration, Campaigns, Congress, David Petraeus, Democrats, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Middle East, Military, President Bush, Republicans, Senate, WH 2008
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