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Today on Capital Hill all three presidential candidates had the chance to question Gen. David Petraeus during today’s hearings over the progress of the Iraq War. I watched a bit of it and found Clinton to be strong in her questioning yet reserved enough as to not seem overly critical of Petraeus. Obama will be taking the mic soon with his line of questioning around 5pm est, I’ll post video of when it’s up.
First, here’s some video of McCain’s line of questioning:
McCain was much more accepting of Petraeus as he’s been an advocate for the troop surge.
Here’s Clinton with some questions:
Here’s a report on Clinton and McCain from CNN:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The sharp differences between Sen. John McCain and the Democratic presidential candidates over the war in Iraq shared the spotlight during Senate hearings Tuesday.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said success in Iraq was “within reach” at the beginning of high-profile hearing on the Iraq involving Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the top American diplomat in Baghdad.
“Our goal — my goal — is an Iraq that no longer needs American troops, and I believe we can achieve that goal, perhaps sooner than many imagine,” McCain said. “But I also believe that the promise of withdrawal of our forces regardless of the consequences would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”
“Success, the establishment of peaceful, democratic state, the defeat of terrorism — this success is within reach,” he said. “Congress must not choose to lose in Iraq. We must choose to succeed.”
In an apparent response to McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton Tuesday said the opposite was true: It would be “irresponsible” to continue a failed policy in Iraq.
She said it was “time to begin an orderly process of withdrawing our troops” from Iraq in order to focus on Afghanistan and other U.S. interests.
“It might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced results that have been promised time and time again,” she said, noting a “lack of political progress over the past six months” in Iraq.
McCain as well as Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, the two rivals for the Democratic nomination, will have opportunities to question Petraeus and Crocker before the day is over.
As mentioned, Obama has not yet had the opportunity to question Petraeus and Crocker, I’ll post that video once it’s up.
In the mean time, here’s video of Obama on the Today Show this morning discussing the hearings:
He’s just taking the chair now and will be speaking soon.
Update
Here’s video of Obama’s questioning:
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I get a sense while listening to this hearing that the talking heads are doing their job and the jar heads are doing theirs and nothing has really changed. If you look at the war though you can see that the dynamics have changed but the questions and answers passed back and forth haven’t. What’s the point of this hearing, other than being a political playground, if no progress is being made?
I’ve grown frustrated with Obama’s campaign in many areas - but in this hearing I wish the public had paid more attention, because I thought he really nailed the issue.
He made the General outline all our key goals in Iraq, and it became pretty clear that we simply aren’t anywhere near achieving them.
After outlining their goals, when Obama said that he feared this could potentially take another 20-30 years to achieve - General Petraeus could have laughed it off and said “No, Senator, we’ve more or less got this in the bag. Just please leave the troops a while longer”.
But he pretty much just stayed silent.
This just isn’t a good sign - the general doesn’t think Obama’s fears are unfounded, or surely he would have made that clear.
Indiminded, with all due respect, I watched the hearings live throughout the day, and while I agree with you that Obama asked good questions, I have to also say he was not the first to ask them. Or the last for that matter.
I can sympathize with your frustration, I spent a lot of time and frustration myself trying decide who to support in this election, since I’m not a party voter but rather a person voter. I really wanted to believe that Obama was that reincarnation of Kennedy we’d all love to see, but I just couldn’t.
The thing that struck me most about the candidates performance in these hearings went again to experience, and was first seen in the order that the members were allowed to ask questions. McCain, being a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee was the first, and I found his questions to be pointed and relavant. I was impressed with how comfortable he seemed holding Petraeus accountable for a less than stellar performance, even asking him what lesson was learned from it. It was obvious he was well informed and his questions were spot on. This - to me - says he’s a natural leader in military matters, and showed why he’s a valuable senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Clinton is a Junior member of the committee, so she came second, and honestly by the time she even got her 6 minutes, the questions had mostly been asked and answered. I think it showed on her, too, she seemed tired, or bored,(I couldn’t really decide which)with the whole affair. Not a stellar performance for her at all, I felt she could have done much better.
By the time Obama, the very junior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee got his chance (which was 13th, 4th from the bottom of the list), there was little else to be asked or answered. I did think he did a good job of reiterating his own stance, but I just personally found his questions to be an attempt to get Petraeus to “prove him right” so to speak, which didn’t happen. Of course that’s what most of them were doing as well. He did a better job at it than a lot of them did, including Ted Kennedy who I thought just came off as pompus, but I don’t think in the end he proved any more to me than that we need the experience of McCain in this area. Obama is just too green to handle something of this magnitude yet. And his statement of a few days ago on the subject of his expertise on foreign policy, saying he was more experienced than Clinton or McCain, really scared the bejeesus out of me. Surely he can’t believe that, surely he was making a joke.
As far as Petraeus not answering his comment, I noticed anytime a member seemed to be stating an opinion, he didn’t respond. He seemed very careful to only respond to a direct question, and I don’t believe Obama posed that as a question, did he?