Thursday, April 5, 2007

Rice trying to dodge hearing on Iraq-Niger documents

On Iraq, Reporters May Be Missing Their Mark(et)

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; A11

The liberal media have been jumping all over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for accusing the press of not reporting all the good news in Iraq. There has been some improvement, McCain told reporters after strolling through the Shorja market in Baghdad. "But the American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here.

"They are not getting the full picture of the drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city, the situation in Anbar province, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades who are performing well, and other signs of progress that have been made."

Instead, what does the press do? It harps on the hundreds killed around the country in the week before the visit, including at least 152 in Tall Afar, and the six U.S. soldiers killed the day McCain, wearing a flak jacket and surrounded by dozens of troops, was at the market.

We're now in the fifth year of the media's failure to report the good news from Iraq.

There has been much less attention paid to Rep. Mike Pence's assessment. Pence (R-Ind.) seemed most impressed by their shopping outing, saying he was able to "mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis." Unfettered even by the troops all around them or the flak jackets the lawmakers wore.

Some nearby shopkeepers recalled that the day before the visit an Iraqi soldier had been shot by a sniper, and the day before that a sniper had killed two more victims.

Pence, however, said he came away from his "day at the market in Baghdad with a new sense of cautious optimism that freedom might just work for these people." The Shorja market, he said, was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Really? Just like the weekend farmers market in the Minnetrista Cultural Center parking lot in Muncie?

Maybe not exactly. "There've been no shootings or car bombings" at that market since it opened a few years ago, said Robin Gibson, assistant metro editor of the Star Press in Muncie. So no dangers there at all? "Maybe some overeager dogs jumping at people," she ventured.

Avon Waters, a former features editor and writer for the Herald Bulletin in Anderson, the other relatively big town in Pence's largely rural congressional district, said he never wore a flak jacket and "never felt afraid" when he spent a couple of recent years covering farmers markets in Madison County, including places such as Elwood and Pendleton.

"No snipers or car bombs," Waters reported.

Well, there weren't any during the lawmakers' visit to the Baghdad market either, which enabled Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to do some excellent shopping. "I bought five rugs for five bucks," he boasted. "People were engaging."

Remember when Mitt Romney's dad went to check things out in Vietnam?

A Purloined Letter?

I did call, I did write, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday in a letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

Waxman, Loop fans may recall, wrote to Rice last week saying that she had not responded to many of his letters over the years asking about the administration's bogus claims that Iraq wanted to buy uranium from Niger, how it handled classified information and other matters.

Because she hadn't responded, Waxman on Friday sent her an invitation to come up to the Hill for a hearing on April 18.

But yesterday, in a lengthy missive on her behalf by Jeffrey T. Bergner, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, the State Department said she has been quite responsive.

"Our records reflect that you have sent 49 individual letters . . . since 2003, 21 of which" went to Rice, Bergner said, and with the exception of one letter they haven't been able to find and a few recent ones they're working on, she's responded to everything.

"I'm sure that this thorough and comprehensive" response, department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday, will be sufficient to "obviate the need" for a formal hearing.

Stay tuned.

Can't Spell Limbo Without OMB

Susan E. Dudley will get one more hearing.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will, once again, take up her troubled nomination to oversee federal regulatory policy at the Office of Management and Budget.

Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) "is moving forward in the traditional manner with her nomination," committee spokeswoman Leslie Phillips told our colleague Stephen Barr.

President Bush named Dudley to the OMB post last August, and her confirmation hearing was held in November. The Senate adjourned without voting on her nomination, which the White House later resubmitted.

While in confirmation limbo, she has been serving as counselor to Clay Johnson III, a presidential buddy and the deputy director for management at the OMB.

Before her first nomination, Dudley wrote about regulation for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and her critics assailed her comments involving air bags, arsenic limits in drinking water and workplace injuries.

Tripp Goes Back to Court

Linda Tripp, erstwhile pal of Monica Lewinsky, is scheduled to appear today in Fauquier General District Court in Warrenton in a dispute with the Pentagon Federal Credit Union over unpaid credit card bills. Tripp now owes $2,822.68, with attorneys' fees and such included, on a consumer loan, according to papers filed with the court.

It's unclear whether Tripp will make it, though. The county sheriff's office, which tried to serve her notice of the court date, says she moved from Marshall and left no forwarding address, though they note that she may be working at a store in Middleburg.

Heading Out . . .

Richard Lawless, the deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia and Pacific affairs and an expert on Korean matters and China policy, is reported to be leaving his job in the next few weeks, apparently for personal reasons. The authoritative Nelson Report has it that Lawless's deputy, Jim Shinn, formerly the CIA's national intelligence officer for Asia, is expected to be nominated assistant secretary of defense for Asia.

No comments: