I want to listen to the people who know what they're talking about, and that's the commanders on the ground in Iraq.
When questions about Iraq are asked, how often have we heard George W. Bush say that he listens to his commanders on the ground? Strategy, conditions, troop levels, whatever the case may be, the answer is the same...the commanders on the ground know best.
Well maybe it is time for the Decider to listen to the boots-on-the-ground. But perhaps he's afraid he'd have a dickens of time finding any to paint a rosy picture...
As the Article 32 hearing into the brutal rape and murder of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killing of her family enters its second day, we have
testimony from one of those boots-on-the-ground that paints a picture that we never hear from the White House. Pfc. Justin Cross calls the conditions in Iraq "mentally draining" and that:
It drives you nuts. You feel like every step you might get blown up. You just hit a point where you're like, 'If I die today, I die.' You're just walking a death walk.
Cross described his unit as "full of despair" and that the loss of two comrades had, "pretty much crushed the platoon."
Mentally drained, fatalism, despair...is this how our soldiers are feeling while they paint schoolhouses, or are doing all of the other the things (whatever they are), that this administration calls "remarkable progress"? Now one might argue that this is just one voice out of 135,000...but is that voice less credible than the one voice that comes from this White House?
Who are you going to believe? The mouthpieces for this administration whose assessment on Iraq jibes with George Bush's through thick and thin, or the people who are living it?