Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd is using Army reserve CPT Brian Freeman’s death as an argument for withdrawal from Iraq. Dodd says Freeman, killed last weekend in an assault some say was engineered by Iran, passionately complained to Dodd when the senator visited Iraq that Freeman was having to do State Department instead of Army work:
“’Senator, it’s nuts over here,’ Dodd quoted Freeman in the Senate on Friday. ‘Soldiers are being asked to do work we’re not trained to do. I’m doing work that the State Department people are far more prepared to do in fostering democracy, but they’re not allowed to come off the bases because it’s too dangerous here. It doesn’t make any sense.’”
This fits in with previous reporting that the State Department and other agencies are leaving the work in Iraq to the Pentagon. President Bush mentioned in his State of the Union speech that the rest of government needed to do more. Even Gen. Petraeus, the new coalition commander in Baghdad recently complained about it in his Senate confirmation hearings. Sometimes it looks like the whole American government has become unhinged and incompetent: place-holders and buck-passers with their own private political agendas. The Jihadis must be loving it.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 