Andrews hammers Crocker on lack of progress on benchmarks - Crocker put on defensive Posted by Max Bergmann

In questioning from Congressman Andrews, Crocker was on the defensive. Andrews hitting on the debathification law points out that this law hits the Baathist Sunnis hard and prevents them from working in the defense and interior ministry which will prevent them from reconciling with the Shia dominated government. In short its a law that does nothing to facilitate reconciliation. In addition Andrews notes that there has been no progress on a hydrocarbon law - ie the law that divides oil revenue.

In general Crocker has had to squirm much more in the hearings than Petraeus. If you by the notion that these hearings are like a "job performance review" then it is clear that Crocker has a lot more to squirm about than Petraeus due to the inability to achieve any real political progress, while Petraeus seems a bit more assured because of the security improvements.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

In general Crocker has had to squirm much more in the hearings than Petraeus.

That's because Crocker is an ambassador, and so everyone knows he is there to lie for his President. Petraeus's fibs are more discreet, and are hidden behind all those ribbons and buttons and feathers that have been proven to be 94.7% effective in dazzling Congressmen, and reducing them to sycophantic babblers.

In any case, read my comments on the previous post. For Congress to be fussing now about their precious "benchmarks" is a little bit like having one of them ask, "Hey, whatever happened to those WMDs anyway?" Petraeus and Crocker are the Kings of Iraq. They don't been no stinking benchmarks.