Abizaid's Senate Smackdown

Hey, how much ink do you think this story would have gotten if GeneralAbizaid had capitulated to the shrew Hillary Clinton and her equally jerky Senate counterpart John McCain and said what they wanted him to say? Why, we'd have wall to wall, nightly coverage. But no, Gen. Abizaid pretty much confirmed what Rumsfeld and Bush have been saying all along. In David Limbaugh's latest column, he goes through some of the highlights, like this one:

Clinton, looking through her pedantically professorial reading spectacles, said, "We don't have a military force that is creating a secure environment. Hope is not a strategy."

Unfazed by her empty platitude, Abizaid denied the military (or, by extension, the administration) had ever "misled" about Iraq. "With regard to hope not being a method, Senator, I agree with you, and I would also say that despair is not a method." Touche.

Even more delicious was Abizaid's statement, "When I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I'm in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to our soldiers, when I talk to the Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing." I hope Americans were listening. It's the mainstream media and naysaying politicians who are responsible for a great deal of the public's "despair" on Iraq.

Read the whole column. I'm so glad General Abizaid stood his ground and did not let himself be manipulated by these Senators who aren't worthy to be in the same room with him.

JASmius adds: Too bad his valiance will be futile.

I hope he plans on retiring before Mrs. Clinton becomes his Commander-in-Chief; if Abazaid is still on active duty two years from now, he'll end up in the stockade for this defiance.