Word: petraeus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...exchange came during the general's second hearing Tuesday - the first had been before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - and the third of the week for both Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. The Senate is the preeminent chamber on foreign affairs and national security (remember, its members have to ratify international treaties and confirm secretaries of state and defense), and so, in contrast to the House a day earlier, much of the nearly 10 hours of Senators' questioning was tough and to the point: What is the mission of the U.S. military in Iraq, the Senators wanted...
...told the witnesses. "Any of the metrics that have been referenced in your many hours of testimony, any fair reading of the advantages and disadvantages accruing post-surge, in my view, end up on the down side." But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, betrayed none of Petraeus' hesitancy when he spoke of the stakes in Iraq. "The choices that we make now, whether to build on the success of the surge and fight for additional gains," he said, "or whether to set a date for American surrender in Iraq, will affect the security of all our countrymen for decades...
...When Petraeus offered the good news that he soon would order a 2,000-Marine unit home, Senator Biden, the Delaware Democrat at the helm of the foreign relations session, noted that the unit was simply coming to the end of its scheduled combat tour. "They are scheduled to come out," Petraeus conceded, "but I could have easily requested an extension of them...
...Tuesday's end, it was becoming clear that Congress is not impressed by President Bush's plan, in a Thursday night address to the nation, to embrace Petraeus' proposal to reduce the 160,000-troop contingent currently in Iraq to 130,000 by next August. And it was not only Democrats asking the questions suggesting that remaining in Iraq was futile. "The greatest risk for United States policy is not that we are incapable of making progress, but that this progress may be largely beside the point, given the divisions that now afflict Iraqi society," said Senator Richard Lugar...
...Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., took a glance backward. The Vietnam vet likened Petraeus' testimony to that of William Westmoreland, the Army general who told Congress in 1967 that things were getting better in Southeast Asia. Not since then, he said, has a U.S. general played such an important role in the making of U.S. national-security strategy. "But," he added, "almost half the names that found their way to the Vietnam wall after that testimony found their way there when our leaders had acknowledged, in retrospect, that they knew the policy was not working...