Via Think Progress, we learn that General Petraeus met privately with the Republican caucus and told them he will deliver ‘real progress’ by August. According to Andrea Mitchell, who was bandying about this scoop, the Republicans are deeply skeptical and are readying to jump ship on the President.
Here are some excerpts, taken from The Chris Matthews Show.
MITCHELL: I think the Republicans are going to crack. What I’ve been told from inside the moderate center of the Republican caucus is that the vote in favor of the president this week — it was against the president but the Republicans holding for the president — was misleading. That they really are not in favor of the surge. They don’t believe it’s going to work. But they basically said the president has until August, until Labor Day. After that, if it doesn’t work, they’re running.
MITCHELL: They’ll stick until September and then they’ll leave. I believe very firmly that they’re against what he is doing but they feel that General Petraeus has persuaded them that for all intents and purposes, they can’t vote a withdrawal before September.
MITCHELL: Petraeus went to the Republican caucus and told them, I will have real progress to you by August. They told him, if — we’ll stick with you —
KLEIN: I don’t think he did.
Well, I — excuse me…
MATTHEWS: Agree to disagree.
KLEIN: I believe that he did not, and I think that this is a…
MATTHEWS: But the country was led to believe — by the way, the nature of the surge, the word itself is an escalation, suggests a short-term upgrade of the effort.
KLEIN: Counter-insurgency tactics are not a surge. They’re a glacier that takes years to work.
MATTHEWS: Then we were given the wrong labeling here. We have the word surge. Andrea, we got the label from the president himself.
KLEIN: The important thing this isn’t going to work.
MITCHELL: The Republicans were against the surge but they felt it was fait accompli, and that they were willing to give Petraeus until August. He told them there will be real progress by August. They have told him at a caucus meeting as very, very recently, that if there isn’t progress by August — and real progress means not a day of violence and a day of sanity — that they will pull the plug.
I wish Joe Klein had been allowed to spit out whatever it was he was trying to say, because he seemed to be contradicting Mitchell’s account.
Regardless, her account is disturbing for several reasons. First, I think it is inappropriate for the commanding general in Iraq to meet privately with the Republican caucus to plot a legislative strategy for dealing with the Democrats. And that is what it appears Mitchell was reporting.
Second, if they know (or strongly believe) that the plan is not going to work (especially by August) then they have no business sending tens of thousands of troops into harms way. It’s immoral and it’s very expensive, and it will make matters worse.
Third, if the Republicans want to give the President until August to shore up the Maliki government, they should have crafted amendments to the effect, and lobbied moderate Democrats to support their amendments. There could have been some real bipartisan cooperation for such a strategy.
My last observation is that it appears support for Bush is crumbling and crumbling quite a bit faster than anticipated. We really should be quietly planning for a caretaker government to take us through the fall into the 2008 election season. The Republicans shouldn’t wait until their drubbing in November ’08 to start cleaning up their house. Their party can’t survive much more of this and it is only getting started with Waxman, Conyers, and Leahy launching a major multipronged oversight attack just before congress adjourned for their spring break.
The second half of April will be filled with hearings on incredibly damaging revelations about the Bush administration’s malfeasance. The leaders of the GOP must begin preparing themselves for the worst. Better to get it over with this year and spend next year recuperating. No one can defend this administration at this point. And they have no incentive to further sully themselves in the attempt.
It’s too bad that Obama is badly off message.
Booman, could you post this in Orange? Please.
House of cards.
“Why…you’re nothing but a pack of cards!!!” said Alice.
Yup.
Took her long enough…
MITCHELL: The Republicans were against the surge but they felt it was fait accompli, and that they were willing to give Petraeus until August. He told them there will be real progress by August. …
Easy to do if you’re a well to do federal politician with access to the best for your children. Sure, they can wait 4 more months while less connected Americans continue to die in Iraq, not to mention the many Iraqis that will also face that fate.
So real progress is Bushspeak for more death and failure, but many more coporate profits
Like so many things in this administration this just compounds insult on insult…having the top general meeting only with rethugs and basically saying ‘trust me’ things will get better(recycled Vietnam speak)and the sorry ass rethugs who after 4 years still believe this bullshit while the troops continue to die in ever higher daily numbers as do the Iraqi’s(and no doubt the contractor/mercs also)…of course he wouldn’t meet with the dems cause they’d probably tell him he was full of shit, well hopefully most of them anyway. Soundbites on the news from a dem meeting might not sound too good. Yeah trust me-all evidence to the contrary-that things will get better…only for all the war profiteers bottom line.
As for Obama’s statement, well gee I thought he was against the war but as long as he wants to fund it and pretend it’s for the troops well I’ve got a bridge somewhere anywhere to sell ya. You can’t have it both ways you moron, oh wait you can if you’re a politician first and human being second…if that sounds a bit harsh well I’m fed up with all this mealy mouthed bullshit.
It is staggering: Two- that is two gop congresspeople are in the process of visiting Syria right now.
And NBC is reporting from baghdad that while mccain is claiming that things are better and that he just went for a walk in a market he appears to have forgotten that there were more than 100 security forces surrounding him and between 3 and 5 armed helicopters flying overheard.
These bastards have no morality whatsoever. None.
Now let us all sit back and watch the spin.
You have to continue to wonder just how stupid the Faux news audience and the rest of the general public is is…if things were going so great as they keep saying(year after year now) and the media isn’t reporting it just why isn’t Faux sending dozens of people over there to roam through the streets seeing all the happy happy people. Or why bush, tough guy that is thinks is hasn’t visited over there regularly and shown the public all the wonderful stuff happening? Maybe it’s because he and all the rest of them know it’s all bullshit no matter what talking points they keep spouting.
This meeting took place a couple of weeks ago? And no in-house leaks? Seems to be yet another example of when you have a meeting with a Rep or a crowd of them, somebody needs to carry a tape recorder. (note to USA hearings)
From any angle, using any lense, such a gathering is extraorinarily inappropriate. Who did these people have for kindergarten teachers that they so completely missed the basics of right and wrong? Josh was right, you just can’t make laws big enough to curb people who don’t get the spirit of the law.
If this meeting is only coming out now (a completely illegal meeting) then there’s no reason to believe there’s any rebellionor independence among those republicans.
Every winter the incidents of violence and casualties drop (relative to the whole year). When the surge was first suggested, thoughts were mentioned that it was timed to take advantage of this statistical phenomenon, both for tactical and PR reasons.
On the otherhand, it would illogical to try to detiremine the effect of the surge (unless it was overwhelmingly positive or negative) during that same period, knowing that there is evidence of a downturn of violence and casualties during the winter.
By extension, you would really need to allow the next four or five months to roll by to have enough data to gauge a gradual improvement (or lack thereof), so this ‘August deadline’ probably encompasses a little of both of those points.
Of course, this is speaking from a statistical point; I never thought the surge was a good idea. But to honestly see its effect, six – eight months are probably needed.
On the other hand, Republican legislators are probably wishing for a way to start moving away from the miserable failure (and his war) before the fall and the one year countdown to the elections.
dang it, tivoing the ball game, drinking beer, and blog commenting all at the same time leads to errors…
my comment about ‘both of these points,’ should have been appended to the last sentence, like this:
We started with 100,000-120,000 American troops.
We trained 350,000 Iraqi troops.
We pay 120,000+ mercenaries. (not with the original US forces)
We have added at least 20,000 American troops.
That is a ‘surge’ of at least, 490,000 new troops.
The total number, fighting for the Iraqi government…appx. 610,000 with 28,000+ more planned, making a total of 638,000.
By all accounts, Iraq is worse off than ever.
How is a 28,000 troop ‘surge’ going to fix it?
It’s like the business man talking to his accountant. The accountant tells him, ‘The product costs us $2 to produce, and we are selling it for $1, something has to be done.” The owner replies, “What we need, is more volume.”
You miss the intense pressure and blackmail from the White House. Bush is not rational. He is not planning. He is crossing his fingers and doubling down. The Republicans may say they will “pull the plug” but the prospect of retribution from Rove is something tangible and very, very destructive. Republicans may threaten, but they have never shown any independence.