By now everyone knows that our top general in Iraq, David Petraeus, has been personally devastated by an ad MoveOn published last week asking if Petraeus had "Betray[ed] Us" (a play on his name) by cooking the books on Iraq. (Petraeus has cooked the books before, most recently when he was in charge of training the still-non-existent Iraqi security forces and repeatedly lied about how well it was going, and got chewed out by Ambassador Negroponte as a result). To hear the Republicans talk (President Bush attacked MoveOn today in a press conference and the House and Senate Republicans want to pass legislation decrying MoveOn), Petraeus has been sitting in a tent in the desert crying his eyes out, unable to engage the enemy for an entire week.
Which leads me to ask a very serious and troubling question: If David Petraeus can't handle being called a name, how is he going to handle Al Qaeda?
PS The Senate just passed its legislation, with Hillary and the other Dem presidential contenders voting against it (hear hear) - well, that is, everyone except Obama, who voted for the Democratic alternative and then was a no-show for the vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing bill.
UPDATE: Obama has released a statement about why he didn't vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing amendment
"The focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements. This amendment was a stunt designed only to score cheap political points while what we should be doing is focusing on the deadly serious challenge we face in Iraq. It's precisely this kind of political game-playing that makes most Americans cynical about Washington's ability to solve America's problems. By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against this empty politics. I registered my views on the ad itself the day it appeared.
"All of us respect the service of General Petraeus and all of our brave men and women in uniform. The way to honor that service is to give them a mission that is responsible, not to vote on amendments like the Cornyn amendment while we continue to pursue the wrong policy in Iraq."
