KC Buzz Blog

Why bother?

    The president's national security team found no quarter yesterday when they trooped up to Capitol Hill to defend the new Iraq strategy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who appeared before the House Armed Services Committee with Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, must have anticipated as much.

    In his opening statement before the committee, chaired by by Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton, Gates' prepared remarks included this passage: "While I doubt Gen. Pace and I can change many minds here today, perhaps we can allay at least some of your concerns."

    He was right about not changing any minds, and wrong about allaying concerns. But maybe Gates sensed that as soon as he walked into the crowded hearing room. That passage was curiously absent when Gates read his statement.

Posted by David Goldstein   

Ike and Iraq

   With no easy answers for what to do about Iraq, official Washington has been anticipating the report from the Iraq Study Group like it was the message from above.

    Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, who will chair the Armed Services Committee when Democrats take over Congress next year, has been writing letters to the White House for several years with questions, warnings and advice, but to little effect. Now he's cautiously hopeful.

    "Because these recommendations have bipartisan support," he said, "I am encouraged that bipartisan consensus might be achieved within Congress and with the administration, as well."

Posted by David Goldstein 

Skelton: 'It's a political decision'

  Rep. Ike Skelton appeared on "Meet the Press" Sunday (you can find the MTP home page here; click around a bit to find a video excerpt.)

  Skelton told host Tim Russert that the ultimate solution in Iraq depends on the Iraqis "standing up" to handle the country's security crisis.

   But he also said he doesn't think the current government can disarm the various militia now battling in the country.

   Also on the Sunday shows, and talking about Iraq, were Sen.-elect Claire McCaskill and Sen. Sam Brownback.

     Here's Brownback on ABC's "This Week:"

    "We cannot face the public again in 2008 with the current situation still in hand for the United States. We have to push for a political solution in the region. And I think we've really got to start pushing people there on the ground and in the area to come together, to work together, because we can't have this same situation 18 months from now facing the United States."

    Here's McCaskill of Missouri on CBS's "Face the Nation":

   "...we have to begin to engage (moderate Arab countries) in order to have them weigh in. If we do not do that, what has become a civil war is going to disintegrate and begin to impact other nations besides Iraq, and then we really have created an incredible mess...I think all of us know that we have made a terrible mistake in Iraq. There are no good answers right now, none..."

To read more quotes, click here.

Posted by Dave Helling and David Goldstein

More on North Korea

    Rep. Emanuel Cleaver: "I think we've gotten into this because we haven't been paying attention. I think this could ignite an Asian arms race. No leader of a nation will sleep better tonight because of the test by North Korea."

    Rep. Ike Skelton: "North Korea continues playing a highly dangerous game...Because of its importance to both regional and international security, this issue must be given far greater priority...including the appointment of a high level coordinator for North Korean policy within the administration."

Posted by David Goldstein

Ike to Bush: "You're late."

  Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton on President Bush's plan for military tribunals of Guantanamo detainees: "Congress has been awaiting this legislation for two months and it is being given to the Congress with little time to consider the bill with the seriousness and deliberation that the American people deserve."

Posted by David Goldstein

Ike's history lesson

    Like an irate teacher, Rep. Ike Skelton rapped Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's knuckles today for missing the lessons of World War II.

    Rumsfeld told the American Legion convention Tuesday that the unchecked rise of Nazism in the 1930s came amid "cynicism and moral confusion" in the west.

    But when he said, "It is apparent that many have still not learned history's lesson," a clear shot at critics of the administration's handling of Iraq and the war on terror, Skelton and other Democrats fired back.

  "It is a dangerous business to accuse those who disagree with you of moral and intellectual confusion," Skelton said. "Debate in our democracy is based upon respect, not vilification. The lesson he should have chosen to draw from World War II is the lesson of the successful allied occupation of Germany after the war. That lesson might have served to prevent the misadventure of Iraq's occupation today."

Posted by David Goldstein   

Skelton backs Bush on Middle East

   Rep. Ike Skelton was one of 10 members of Congress briefed by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this afternoon on Middle East strife.

   Skelton, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, has been harshly critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

   But he came away from today's hour-long meeting convinced that "U.S. policy is on the right track" to quell the burgeoning crisis.

   "Israel has the right of self-defense...The root cause of this problem is Hezbollah," Skelton said.

   Skelton applauded the administration's plan to prod Syria (mainly though financial and United Nations pressure) and isolate Iran, the two chief sponsors of Hezbollah, and to maintain the viability of the Lebanese government.

Posted by Matt Stearns

Skelton on the war

   Since the Iraq war began more than three years ago, Democrat Ike Skelton of Missouri has walked the difficult line between supporting the troops and the ideals behind the invasion, and criticizing the administration's bad planning and the dire results more skillfully than most.

   He raised those question agains today as the House debated the war, a back-and-forth that saw Republicans labeling its critics as defeatists who shouldn't be re-elected, and Democrats calling the war a "grotesque mistake."

   Skelton told his colleagues that he wrote President Bush two letters before the war outlining his concerns. Bush then dispatched Defense and national security officials to his Capitol Hill office to persuade him that all was hunky-dory.

   On the floor today, Skelton said Bush's emissaries told him: "Ike, it'll be all right."

   More from the speech: "We know what happened in the aftermath because; we allowed the looting, we sent the Iraqi army home rather than give them a paycheck and a shovel, and we didn't have enough troops to quell any insurgency, and it arose."

   And more:

   "This nation is at a strategic crossroads. We are spending $9 billion a month and have spent over $300 billion total on this war. More strikingly, we are losing a battalion's worth of casualties a month, killed and injured, between Iraq and Afghanistan, by far most of them, sadly, are in Iraq. And there are increasing insurgent-inspired attacks."

   Here's the full text of his speech.

Posted by David Goldstein 3:40 p.m.

Ike: Long Way to go

   Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, well-regarded voice on national security issues, and thorn-in-the-Bush-administration's-side on Iraq policy from the get-go, weighs in on Zarqawi:

   Skelton gave huzzahs to the military for the operation, and congratulated the Iraqi government for new cabinet appointments, called today's developments "positive," and said he hoped "they bolster the morale and confidence of the Iraqi security forces who must increasingly take on the security of their nation."

   But: "There is still a long way to go before there is a secure Iraq with a stable, unified government able to fully provide for its own security."

Posted by Matt Stearns 2:25 p.m.