"Our Level of Confidence is Under Control"

Watching General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker facing the hours of questioning from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, I couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for the two men. Both men looked as if they were in the hot seat--as they were and as they should be. The reports of these two men have been touted by the Bush administration for months as the Holy Grail to understanding the need to keep our troops in Iraq. Petraeus and Crocker were going to provide us with the answers.

Of the long excerpt of exchanges I watched on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, one struck me most forcefully. John McCain asked Ambassador Crocker whether he had any confidence that the Maliki government of Iraq had any hope of meeting the benchmarks the U. S. had set out for the country. Crocker's response? "Our level of confidence is under control."

Tom gave out a sharp bark of laughter when Crocker said this. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, smiling and yet also feeling some sympathy for the ambassador.

Ambassador Crocker parsed his answer very carefully. "Our level of confidence is under control." What a contrast that is to our president's saying that we're "kicking ass" in Iraq. What a contrast to Donald Rumsfeld's opinion that the Iraqis would embrace us as liberators. I think of Molly Ivins, grinning in her grave, not a triumphant grin but a bitter grin. Her words, in 2002: "The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now."

There was no triumphalism in the voices of either of these two men. They tried to paint as positive a picture as they could, but they were far from triumphant.

After the long excerpt from the hearings, Jim Lehrer talked with Joe Biden, Democratic senator, and Richard Lugar, Republican senator. There was no triumphalism here, either.

What do you think, Lehrer asked Lugar, of the plan to keep over 100,000 troops in Iraq to next summer?

Lugar's response? “This [keeping 100,000 troops in Iraq] has a very narrow margin of success.”

Yes, I would say that our level of confidence is very much under control.

UPDATE, 12 Sept.: I've read several news reports on the hearings yesterday and noted that reporters recorded Ambassador Crocker as saying "MY level of confidence is under control"--not "Our."