Congress Daily reports on a recent conference call with Democratic Senator Ben Nelson and former Kerry campaign foreign policy adviser Rand Beers. The call focused on Nelson's effort to push for a change in mission for our troops in Iraq, and the failure of the surge to promote political reconciliation. Yet while Nelson reportedly acknowledges that the surge has achieved 'key military objectives,' he is apparently still able to utter this phrase:
Noting that President Bush announced the surge initiative last January, Nelson said: "Here we are one year later and it's like Groundhog Day. Everything seems to be the same."
The comment demonstrates a stunning indifference to the extraordinary turnaround that has taken place in Iraq in the last year. Go back and read the address the president gave one year ago today, announcing the failings of the old strategy and the implementation of the surge:
The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis... Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents... Al Qaeda is still active in Iraq. Its home base is Anbar Province. Al Qaeda has helped make Anbar the most violent area of Iraq outside the capital. A captured al Qaeda document describes the terrorists' plan to infiltrate and seize control of the province. This would bring al Qaeda closer to its goals of taking down Iraq's democracy, building a radical Islamic empire, and launching new attacks on the United States at home and abroad...
This was the unhappy assessment from the man critics charge with wearing rose-colored glasses on Iraq. How can anyone who's paying the least bit of attention argue with a straight face that 'nothing has changed?' And considering that Senator Nelson is one of his party's more serious and sober national security voices, what does that say for his party overall?