While Congress lavished attention last week on the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, most Iraqis weren’t listening, according to the Washington Post.
“The Americans have hundreds of meetings and testimonies like this, and what has it done for the Iraqi people? Nothing,” said a carpenter in Baghdad. “So why do we care? We just want all the foreigners to leave and stop causing disasters for our country.”Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Iraqi politicians weren’t following the hearings. “To be honest, no one expects anything different in the report or believes that it will have that big an impact on Iraq.”Not exactly a vote of confidence from the people we’re supposed to be helping.
The reactions of Kansas’ Republican senators to the Capitol Hill update from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were predictably upbeat:
“It’s still a difficult situation. Overall, certainly from a year ago, from where we were a year ago, this is a real turnaround,” said Sen. Sam Brownback.”His recommendation for a pause in troop reductions makes common sense if we are to preserve the progress we have made to date,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, who also called the shortening of deployments from 15 to 12 months “overdue.”
It takes political courage to acknowledge and act on the truth that most criminals get out of prison and could use some help integrating into the community. Appreciation is due Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., for being one of the key sponsors of the bipartisan Second Chance Act, which President Bush signed Wednesday and will provide $330 million for re-entry programs targeting job training, literacy and substance abuse. As Brownback recently said of the legislation: “We must stop subsidizing prison programs that do not work and instead focus on programs that will help combat high rates of recidivism.”
Dan Glickman (in photo), former 4th District congressman and current chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, was back in Wichita last week. He helped campaign for Donald Betts, who is running for Glickman’s old congressional seat, now held by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard.
Glickman told The Eagle editorial board that he spent only $100,000 when he first ran for Congress in 1976 (about $400,000 in today’s dollars), and he was able to buy 30-second advertising spots on the TV news back then for only $150. Now, he said, members of Congress continually have to raise money and often are paralyzed from doing anything that might upset their donors. “It’s an insidious system,” he said.
While Congress lavished attention last week on the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, most Iraqis weren’t listening, according to the Washington Post.
