Lieberman: Surge “Would Start to Break the Insurgency”

Filed under: Iraq, Joe Lieberman — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on May 30, 2007 @ 6:15 pm CEST

Senator Joe Lieberman is positive about the surge:

What a coincidence. Two years after Cheney said the insurgency was in its last throes, Joe Lieberman made essentially the same prediction.

CNN reports that Lieberman is on an unannounced “surprise” visit to Baghdad. Paula Hancocks followed Lieberman around. She talked to Lieberman and reported, “He said he was happy with the progress. He was devastated by the fact that May was turning in to the deadliest month since November 2004. But he said he did believe that this surge eventually would pay off and it would start to break the insurgency.”

AMERICAblog has a nice video up of Lieberman strawling through Baghdad (”in full battle gear”).

I really wished that politicians would stop going to Baghdad, for a strawl, to ‘prove’ how well the surge is working. They always end up making fools of themselves. You see them walking through the desert, surrounded by dozens of US forces, wearing body armor, a minute later they say how the security situation has improved…

I do believe that the surge is working now, however. My problem with the surge is not that I believe it will not accomplish anything in the short run. The problem is the long run. The situation might temporarily improve, but that is not enough.

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1 daveinboca

May 30, 2007 @ 6:54 pm CEST

This is a snippet from a recent post of mine:

“after the fall of Baghdad, Gen. Jay Garner and the Task Force he had assembled in Iraq was also summarily called off the job by the Supremo Generalissimo-wannabe Donald Rumsfeld, who in Cobra II is described as nixing the hundreds of man-years of expertise on the Middle East in the Garner group because “we need fresh thinking.” Subsequently, hyper-sycophant Jerry Bremer and Middle East expert Khalilzad were nominated as co-ambassadors, but Bremer complained and Zal was canned. Wouldn’t want linguistic knowledge and vast expertise as part of the mix in the post Baghdad conquest mode. That would not fit in with the Rumsfeld modus operandi.”

The surge is sort of like locking the barn door a couple years after the horses escaped, but the long-term consequences of an American debacle in the Middle East are too difficult to contemplate—for thinking minds who know the region.