Lieberman Ruins Seditionist Morale

Every time the extreme Left thinks it's built up anti-war momentum, the anhedonic Ben Stein poits up to spoil it all with a big, noxious dose of optimism [via CQ]:

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut, fresh from a two-day visit to Iraq over the Thanksgiving holiday, said yesterday he was hopeful American forces could begin a "significant" withdrawal by the end of next year or in 2007.

"The country is now in reach of going from Saddam Hussein to self-government and, I'd add, self-protection," the Democrat said in a conference call with reporters. "That would be a remarkable transformation."...

Mr. Lieberman has visited Iraq four times in 17 months. He said there are signs life is returning to normal, including a profusion of cell phones and satellite TV dishes on rooftops.

"About two-thirds of the country is in really pretty good shape," he said, noting most attacks are in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" region. "Overall, I came back encouraged."

No, no, no! Didn't that damned DINO get the message? Iraq is a disaster, it's a quagmire, Bush has bleeped it up beyond all human comprehension, if we stay there one more day instead of returing the country to its rightful Ba'athist/Islamist owners, we'll all die, Iraqis will all die, huge cracks will open in the Earth's surface and big rocks will start falling from the sky and Chris Matthews will get larangitis, and Gaia KNOWS we can't have THAT.

What would possess J-Lieb to bolt the neoBolshevik reservation like this? How much did Karl Rove pay him? Did he offer him a personality implant?

Or could it be that Lieberman is telling the truth?

Lieutenant-Colonel Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command that is responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency, of which about 45 are rated as "in the lead," with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support.

The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given on November 7 at a briefing by Lieutenant-General David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. It is about 10 higher than the figure General Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing on October 5.

As another measure of progress, Colonel Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own "battle space," including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Colonel Wellman said it stood at three in March.

Also, American forces have pulled out of 30 "forward operating bases" inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

Senator Lieberman did something that the extreme media and their elected counterparts never do - he actually left the green zone, as well as Baghdad, and traveled around the country. And what he saw is that the "insurgency" is being inexorably crushed, and constitutional government established even in former terrorist strongholds like Ramallah and Fallujah. The new Iraqi army is growing in number and proficiency and taking more and more responsibility for policing its own territory and defending its own borders.

The mission, in short, is being accomplished. And when it is, U.S. troops will begin rotating home, or wherever they're needed next, just as the President and SecDef Rumsfeld both reiterated today.

Good ol' Joe wasn't the only Dem to break with his party's "Vietnam v. 2.0" program:

The United States needs to set milestones for progress, not a firm withdrawal date, before it can leave Iraq, Virginia governor and prospective Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner said on Monday.

"This Democrat doesn't think we need to re-fight how we got into (the Iraq war). I think we need to focus more on how to finish it," Warner said.

"To set an arbitrary deadline or specific date is not appropriate," he said. "... It is incumbent on the President to set milestones for what he believes will be the conclusion."

Sure, Warner is going for the "Not Hillary on the Right" slot in the '08 Donk primaries, but it's noteworthy that so prominent a Dem as the outgoing Virginia governor is actually seeking that pole position. There would be a case of the "electability" argument, as well as the ability - proven for Warner, unproven for Mrs. Clinton - to win in "red" states.

'Tis ironic that Hillary would be the compromise Dem candidate between a revived Truman/Scoop Jackson wing and the neoBolsheviks. Ditto that the queen of triangulation would be the fulcrum for everybody else's triangulation. But for those Dems who want to see their party survive, much less rebuild, and all Americans who want to see the two-party system endure, the dragging of that party back toward national security seriousness is imperative. And Mark Warner would be, in several different ways, the ideal break with the Democrats recent and moderately distant past.

All of which means that he's grievously ahead of his time, if such a time will ever exist at all. And he's probably faking this veneer of responsibility in any case. But as post-Clinton Dems appear to have completely forgotten, it's all about winning. You can't do anything if you don't get elected.

After that you can do whatever you want.

But that's another post.