I watched via TV a significant part of the Petraeus/Crocker hearings in both the House and Senate this week before their respective Foreign Relations committees. I watched the speeches by the two old fossils (Skelton, Lantos) who run the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the two ranking republicans, and – most importantly – the entire presentation of both General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I listened to some of the questioning-answering back and forth. I also tuned into Senator Kerry and his predictable long-winded speech as he "questioned" the two men, as well as to other senators.
In the House hearing, before Petraeus said anything, Lantos told him he was a hack for the White House, another way of saying he was a 24-carat liar and that what he had to say meant nothing. Neither of the two old fossils has worn the uniform, while Petraeus, earner of the Bronze Star, is a graduate of West Pont and holds a doctorate from Princeton. "Duty, Honor, Country" is the motto at West Point and embedded in its coat-of-arms.
Petraeus, totally unflappable, simply laid out the facts and made it plain that he had written his own report and that it had not been abridged in any way at the Pentagon or the White House. Native-Hungarian Lantos made it to this country in 1947 on an academic scholarship after this country had paid with blood and treasure to make his good fortune possible. This was his kiss-off of the general.
Four senators who are running for the presidency got in on the act – Obama, Biden, Dodd, and Clinton, who actually is not a member of the Foreign relations Committee or any of its subcommittees but got to get in her licks, anyway. She looked General Crocker in the eye (macho stuff) and told him that he was a liar. Later, in an interview with Slate, Biden said he agreed with her, thus establishing his machismo, though he's never worn the uniform and most likely wouldn't know an M-16 from a BB gun. Clinton knows even less, if that's possible. Anyway, she resembled a five-pound Chihuahua yip-yapping at a two-ton elephant.
Senator Obama, also with no military experience or foreign-affairs experience of substance, chose to take his complete question-time by making a campaign speech and even admitted at the end of his diatribe that he had taken all his time and had no time left for questions. The truth is that he didn't even know the right questions to ask and so wouldn't have recognized a plausible answer, if he'd bothered to prepare. He noted a while back that the lives of those who had died in Iraq had been wasted, thus giving an idea as to his "values system." His mind is in Iowa and New Hampshire…nowhere near Washington.
While listening to the Kerry harangue, one is reminded of Kerry's testimony before the Fulbright Committee in 1971. Quoting the Boston Globe of March 25, 2004, “In a question-and-answer session before a Senate committee in 1971, John F. Kerry, who was a leading antiwar activist at the time, asserted that 200,000 Vietnamese per year were being ‘murdered by the United States of America’ and said he had gone to Paris and ‘talked with both delegations at the peace talks’ and met with communist representatives.” Upon graduating from Yale during the Vietnam action, Kerry requested draft-deferral for a year to study in – where else? – Paris. He was refused, but got three Purple Hearts in four months (at least one "wound" being self-inflicted) while losing only a few hours of duty. He recently remarked that youngsters who didn't do well in school – dumb guys – got "stuck in Iraq."
At the time he descended upon Paris in 1970, Kerry was a reserve naval officer committing an act of treason (defined as “the betrayal of a trust: TREACHERY”) with the enemy while Senator McCain and others were caged like dogs and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton. This means that by the time he made that statement (his exact words, “So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America …”), Kerry’s comrades/nation had murdered [his word] 1.6 million Vietnamese 1964-71 (or almost 4 percent of the population for 1970), mostly civilians – women, children, and old men. He’s never offered a scintilla of proof for that wacky accusation.
Regarding morality, Kerry betrayed his country in 1970 in France, lied to Congress in 1971, and had no standing to be in the same room as Petraeus. He would likely be running for president if he hadn't made that stupid remark about American GIs not being bright. As it is, frauds such as Clinton, Biden, and Obama made themselves look so silly as to be laughed out of town.
Senator Lindsey Graham had the most meaningful exchange with General Petraeus when he and the general agreed that this country will fight Al Queda and other terrorists in Iraq now and stamp them out, or the children and grandchildren of its citizens will be stuck with carrying out this task later. That would perhaps be in this country instead of on foreign soil. Without question, if the Jihad-mongers are not stopped now, they will inundate this and other countries with their murderous philosophy, to wit, that killing innocent women and children is not only acceptable, but preferable in bringing a society to its knees.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment