Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The Gates Hearings [Jonathan Martin]
Spent some time over at the august Hart Senate Office Building hearing room this morning for the SecDef hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The big news, of course, was Gates' acknowledging that we're not winning in Iraq. Some other color and quotes:
- Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), who is launching an '08 exploratory committee this week if you hadn't heard, quipped that he noticed Gates had recently given a speech in Des Moines. You keep a schedule like that, the Hoosier said, and "you're going to get tongues wagging."
- Bayh was, along with the junior senator from New York, one of only a very few committee members still in their seats when the morning session wrapped up around 1, over three hours after it began. For those keeping score, HRC is, for now, the most junior member of the committee and sits at the very end of the horseshoe-shaped dais. Bayh is the second-most junior, so the two presidential primary rivals sit side-by-side.
- The Senate is, of course, the Senate. And perhaps nobody personfiies the courtly nature of the body like Virginia's senior senator. Chairman John Warner gaveled the first session to a close with a typically grand pronouncement that in his "28 years" on the committee, "this is as good a hearing as we've had." Turning to the more plain-spoken ranking member, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Warner asked, "Is that right, senator?" Levin replied, "I'd agree with that." But then, how could he not?
- Levin pronounced himself very satisfied with what he heard at a brief presser following the first session, calling Gates' remarks a "welcome breath of honest, candid realism on Iraq." Levin added that he was "very, very pleased by what we heard this morning" and would seek a "prompt vote" on Gates' confirmation.
- In his remarks to reporters, Warner noted that he'd met with JCS Chair Peter Pace yesterday, and that the Marine General had told him that "we're not winning [in Iraq] and we're not losing." That observation, Warner continued, "directly parallels with the comments of [Gates]" at the hearings. Warner also reminded that the Baker-Hamilton commission will report their findings to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. While you get that TiVo set, I'm headed back to the Hill.
12/05 03:17 PM
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