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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-11-20

Polis Reveals His Own Agenda 

Jared Polis is going on a field trip:

Congressional candidate Jared Polis is taking his campaign to Iraq, where he plans to do a live Web chat and pose questions from Coloradans to Iraqis. . . .

"This isn't a trip to do any of those grandstanding Thanksgiving items. . . . This is not a typical photo op," Polis said Sunday.

"This is not a feel-good trip or a feel- good story."

Well, I should hope not. The feel-good story has already been written:

American officials said other measures indicated that civilian deaths had dropped. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the command, said civilian deaths had dropped by 60 percent since June.

Military analysts said a number of factors explained the drop. They say, for example, that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a predominantly Iraqi insurgent group with foreign leadership, has been greatly weakened by American military attacks. . . .

These trends are stunning in military terms and beyond the predictions of most proponents of the surge last winter,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, referring to President Bush’s troop reinforcement plan.

I wonder if Polis sees this as a fact-finding mission, or a fact-creating mission. Actually, it's probably nothing more than him demonstrating how many more resources he has at his disposal than his opponents.

Look, Polis is probably pretty well-positioned to take over for Mark Udall in the 2nd. The question is will he continue to pull stunts like this or will he mellow things out as the facts on the ground keep changing.

I'm sure the more embarrassing he is to Democrats in general, the more likely he is to get elected in Boulder. But that general embarrassment ought to be useful to Republicans--

again, if we have the means and the will to make use of it.


Posted by: Michael / 11/20/2007 01:28:00 AM

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