This is what McCain said to the highly decorated general:
I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.
Now, I know nothing about generals and what they do, and I have no idea whether Casey deserves good marks or bad marks. But I don't think that what McCain said deserves to be called straight talk. It's insulting talk. Nobody should be talked to this way in public. This is the sort of thing CEOs and managers always do in private.
And McCain, of all people, is denigrating the general because of a failed policy. Military people do not make policy. Doesn't McCain know this? Presidents and senators - yes, senators - make policy. Bush made this policy and McCain supported it enthusiastically. He voted to authorize war and ever since has been more militaristic in his pronouncements than the president has been. He is still screaming to continue this failed policy. Now that the war is not going well, he is pointing at General Casey.
This is called a straight shooter? No way. If McCain were a straight shooter, he would point one finger at the president and another finger at himself.
Now, Zbigniew Brzezinski is what I call a straight-shooter. Here is what he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and this is consistent with everything he has said since the start of the quagmire im Iraq:
If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
McCain is upset because Casey did not "win" and he hopes Petraeus will "win." Brzezinski is upset because he is fairly sure there is no way to "win." The longer we stay, he thinks, the more likely we are to cause a broad war with the Middle East.
We MUST find a way to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Let's stop fiddling around with non-binding resolutions. Bush is asking for $245 billion for this year and next year to fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The Democrats should do some straight shooting and reduce funding for next year's Iraq-War budget.
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