Sunday, June 10, 2007

Why is Senator Harry Reid lying about Iraq?

This week, before Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to manage a Comprehensive Immigration Bill (after the Republican majority got a better bill through last year with a large bipartisan majority of votes), he issued a press release about the Iraq war, in which he said in part:

The President’s troop escalation is now complete, yet a New York Times article this morning reports that security goals are far, far short of the military’s hopes, with just one-third of Baghdad neighborhoods in some semblance of order.
Forget that his characterization of the effects of the surge is incomplete and deliberately misleading -- that's just politics.

And forget for a moment that the results of the troop surge won't show in days, but in months.

The issue here is that Harry Reid lied about the troop surge being "complete", as can be seen from this CNN interview by General Petraeous (video is HERE):

Petraeus: I think it’s important to remember that we’re still a week and a half, two weeks away from having all of the surge forces even on the ground for the first time.

CNN: General, just to be clear, you do not have all of your troops on the ground in country in Baghdad yet?

Petraeus: That is correct. The fifth of the five surge brigades and the Marine Expeditionary Unit and the combat aviation brigade are still positioning themselves in Iraq as we speak, or moving up from Kuwait. And again, they’ll all be in position and actually in operations in less than two weeks.

So Reid claims the surge is completed and isn't working, when the truth is the troops aren't even all on the ground yet (and after they are, it will take time to acheive results).

So, why is Reid lying about this? Is it because he wants to mislead America, or is it because he is just to lazy to pick up the phone and call the General to get the facts before spouting off?

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