Sometimes Swami is just befuddled. He sees the words and knows generally what the words mean. But sometimes even a crystal ball can't decipher what in the heck politicians are saying. Theymight as well be speaking Urdu. Like U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean talking about her trip to Iraq .....
Our county U.S. rep visited Iraq last weekend and came thinking it's lots better there now.
Oh, really?
She's mostly bottled up in the most secure place in the Middle East - the Baghdad green zone where U.S. diplomats stay hunkered down trying not to get hit with a mortar round - and decides it seems "less tense" and less violent there. Her powers of observation now apparently include X-Ray vision.
"The anxiety level was not what it had been," she told reporters this week upon her return.
Pul-eeze.
Maybe she could have tested that theory more thoroughly by going out in the street and walking around untended by the customary heavy firepower. Bet she gets gunned down in less than 60 seconds unless she's inside an Abrams tank, and even then somebody probably will be shooting at her.
This sort of "gosh, the war is going better now" motif is the very sort of silliness that got Sen John McCain scorched for his "walk around to show how safe it is" theatrical several months ago. He was surrounded by enough Marines to successfully invade Hawaii.
As for her evolving policy view of the Iraq War, who knows?
She wants us to leave, pretty soon but not too soon and just soon enough. When? Whenever the Iraqis are OK to take over the war, which could be next week or maybe sometime in the year 2032.
She's for a sort of invisible but meaninful timeline for a staged withdrawal as long as it does not involve either time or a line.
In the meantime, there's no clear sign she will vote for any end of the war or curtailing the funding for it.
She sounds like a member of the Rockefeller wing of the Democratic Party.
This all means she's ripe for a battle with anti-war forces in her Feb. 5 primary. Put up your dukes, Melissa.
It's possible to say "the surge is working" with a straight face. But any rational person should say "the surge has succeeded in bringing violence down temporarily in some areas of Iraq."
Even the Pentagon's numbers and its conclusions are up for dispute.
Remember, the surge has done nothing to help Iraq's wrenching political problems, or help reconcile the warring factions. The surge hasn't helped boost Iraq's basket-case economy, and there is no effort to share oil wealth. In a "good" month, there are about 50 civilians killed every day in Iraq.
Things are still very bad there and Melissa Bean ought to know better. I wonder if Bean will go back in a few months when the surge troops come home. Things will look worse then.