Giving Harry Hell

Things just couldn't be any worse for Bush and the republicans. The war in Iraq is a huge anchor around their necks, immigration seems to be a lose-lose scenario for them, Gonzales is still wowing them at Justice and let's not forget old Scooter. Things are just going great, right?

Well, no, as we all know old big mouth Harry Reid has done it again. Here is a transcript of what was said:

REID: Look what this Justice Department has done. And now, with the Surgeon General, we have a man here who has written articles that I think are a little questionable as to in our modern society. He's a medical doctor. And don't worry, he's gonna be looked at very closely.

BLOGGER QUESTION: What's the next step on Gonzales?

REID: Well, I guess the President, he's gotten rid of Pace because he could not get confirmed here in the Senate. Pace is also a yes-man for the President. I told him to his face, I laid it out last time he came in to see me. I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was. But he got rid of his Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, but he still hangs on to this failed Attorney General. And I guess he's gonna [inaudible]. We're gonna keep focusing on it. Every day that goes by, it seems he keeps giving. Now we've learned that the immigration judges are all graduates of Regent University I guess.

REID AIDE: Guys, I think we have time to take one more question...

I think the Pace incompetency statement was said in the context of the general incompetence of Bush and the people around him. Nonetheless, it is not a smart thing to say. Anything that takes the focus off of the republicans is a plus for them. Pace is open to criticism but it must be approached as a tactic and not an off the cuff comment to bloggers.

Let's look at this a minute, here is what Sen. Jim Bunning said about this:

"The debate about this war has gone into the gutter when the Democrat leader of the United States Senate uses 'disparaging remarks' to describe our military leadership," said Sen. Jim Bunning.

Why is that exactly? Gen. Pace is not a front line officer, his life is not at stake. If the leaders of our military can't be disparaged then what? If Pace is incompetent you can't make a case for it because he's in uniform? That's pretty ridiculous. But what if Pace is more of a politician and less of a general.

The Huffington Post has this well documented. General Pace has made a number of other missteps that reflected poorly on the military as of late:

The straw that broke the camel's back, for us, was his defense of a convicted felon, Scooter Libby, when it was entirely improper for him to do so, as a top leader in the military, who must remain non-partisan.

On Memorial Day, Pace seemed to defend the President's failed policy by deliberating fudging American death numbers from Iraq to sound not as high as they really are.

On March 11, Pace chose to publicly air his personal views on homosexuality, calling the lifestyle "immoral," and said that was justification for the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays openly serving.

In today's press conference announcing the move, Secretary of Defense Gates maintained that one of the reasons for letting Pace go was to avoid a contentious reconfirmation hearing.

In his position as chairman of JCS he seems to be if not militarily incompetent then he is surely politically incompetent.

General Pace has been a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the entire Iraqi war and he has been in on all of the planning. I feel the fact that Pace is carrying out the plan of an incompetent president and Dept. of Defense gives him some cover, but not total cover. There is plenty of incompetence to go around.

There is no advantage in attacking Pace, but it could be done. Attack Bush and the republicans that still support this war and make it stick. Don't give the right-wing echo machine anything to make noise over.

Sen. Reid has shown a propensity for incompetence himself and he should work on keeping his mouth shut until it's hard wired to his brain.

Jim Martin