. . . not everyone was impressed:
“ . . .
while dining on lobster tortellini in the air-conditioned elegance of Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s home in the Green Zone, General David Petraeus, commander of our forces in Iraq, made the case with charts and pointer that the security situation had improved somewhat during the surge. And yet while we were choosing between
coffee, tea, or espresso to go with our dessert, outside in the 120 degree heat on that very day, August 6, four U.S. soldiers were killed by an IED blast in Diyala, one British soldier was shot in Basra, six street cleaners were blown up, 33 Iraqis were killed in a residential neighborhood in Tal Afar, and 17 bodies killed by death squads were discovered.
“Outside in the scorching air, our young men and woman in uniform were sweating under their body armor during, what is in fact, the bloodiest summer of the war, driving on roads that our delegation flew over in Blackhawk helicopters because the driving was too dangerous for us. There they were, doing their valiant best to carry out a misguided mission, risking and too often losing their lives, while we looked at a chart telling us that in one place, in one month, after four and a half years, there had been a slight drop in violence. There was no chart showing that overall sectarian attacks around the country had nearly doubled from last year. And there was no chart that measured the more than 3,700 of our troops that have been killed and the more than 27,660 wounded, many profoundly and for life.
“Neither was there a chart showing the enormous cost of the war, now up to $3 billion a week, $12 million every hour – enough to fix all the broken bridges in our country, expand health care coverage for our children, help our students afford college, develop renewable sources of energy, and make our streets safer.
“And
as we finished our strawberry cake, our troops were out in the real world and not there to hear General Petraeus tell us that the United States would be in Iraq for another nine to 10 years. That means children who are now 8 years old, who were 4 years old when the war started, could yet serve in Iraq, according to General Petraeus.
Jan Schakowsky's Democratic Radio Address September 01, 2007
http://www.janschakowsky.org/SchaBLOGsky/tabid/36/ctl/ArticleView/mid/512/articleId/463/Text-of-Jans-Democratic-Radio-Response.aspx
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