Shays, Lieberman: Please stop talking

6/1/07
Maybe Messrs. Shays and Lieberman can clear up a few things.
Those two esteemed congressional representatives are recently back from trips to the never-ending war in Iraq, but neither of them seems especially downbeat. U.S. troop deaths are reaching all-time highs, but, apparently, there’s reason for optimism. Who would’ve guessed!
Here’s Sen. Lieberman: "Overall, I would say that what I see here today is progress. Significant progress from the last time I was here."
Shays, never one to contradict his Best Friend Forever, concurred. But just to make sure he was covered on all fronts, he made sure to temper his enthusiasm. "We have just encouraged the insurgents to throw everything they have at us. [U.S. officials] think it will be a very hot summer."
One can only wonder what in the world he’s talking about. If the insurgents aren’t "throw[ing] everything they have at us," then what to make of recent developments?
l May 28, 2007 — 10 U.S. troops killed;
l May 26, 2007 — eight U.S. troops killed;
l May 19, 2007 — nine U.S. troops killed.
It goes on and on. No one has failed to notice that American deaths in Iraq have spiked in the past several months, and no one has been able to see a return for our losses. Men and women are dying every day, men and women in the primes of their lives, dying far from home and away from family. And yet still, we have no idea why. We have no indication of when it will stop.
Conventional wisdom has it that Republicans, while sticking with the Bush-Lieberman-Shays line for now, were chastened by last November’s election losses, and will not tolerate another election cycle of continued war without end.
Don’t bet on it. The president has shown no sign he is pulling out troops — none. Instead, he’s busy high-fiving himself after Democrats rescinded a demand for timelines to leave that country.
As for Shays and Lieberman, their credibility on Iraq is so shot that it hardly matters what they say. They’ve been wrong over and over, time after time, year after year. Why should anyone possibly care what they have to say?