Jim Webb didn’t waste any time with the tradition of Senate comity during his first hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.
During yesterday’s hearing, Lindsey Graham’s questions to Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, were straight out of the White House playbook. Question after question couched in such a way that any disagreement would be tantamount to saying, “I hate America.” He finished with a question about high reenlistment rates and asked if the soldiers in Iraq:
[quote]…believe their mission is directly related to the security of their own children and grandchildren?
And after Pace compliantly answered, “Absolutely, sir,” it was Webb’s turn.
General Pace, I wasn’t going to say this, but I want to say something, just my own little interjection here on the reenlistment rates and why people serve. You know, I come from a family that’s spent a lot of time in the military generationally and I think it’s fair to say that in my experience, people rarely enlist for political reasons. Rarely serve for political reasons. They serve because they love their country, they serve because they have a family tradition, they serve for camaraderie, and so I don’t agree with the characterization that proceeded me on that, in toto. There are people who are serving because of the political mission, but there are people who, perhaps even in spite of the political mission, are serving.
It seems safe to say that when Lindsey Graham says, “My friend, the Senator from Virginia,” he’ll be lying through his teeth.
And Webb wasn’t quite ready to get to his questions. He went on to say:
I also want to say something about my longtime friend, Senator McCain’s comments when he was talking about the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and in your statement, Secretary Gates, you list some of these as an emboldened and strengthened Iran, a base of operations for jihadist networks in the heart of the Middle East, an undermining of the credibility of the United States. In many ways, quite frankly, those have been the results of the invasion and occupation. There’s really nothing that’s occurred since the invasion and occupation that was not predictable and in fact, most of it was predicted. It was predicted in many cases by people with long backgrounds in national security…and in many cases there were people who saw their military careers destroyed and who were personally demeaned by people who opposed them on the issues, including members of this administration. And they are people in my judgement, who will be remembered in history as having had a moral conscience.
Booyah![/quote]
Also, it seems, Webb will be delivering the Democratic rebuttal to the President’s State of The Union. All of this thanks to a buddy giving me a heads up and DailyKos for maintaining a keyword driven thread. Keep up with Webb’s doings here: