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Posts published in “Day: December 9, 2006”

Smith’s Iraqi chaos

The mass of comments regionally and nationally about Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith's outburst on Iraq, a subject on which he has not spoken a great deal since his initial vote in favor of going to war, has covered a broad range.

Gordon SmithIt's become a test of the commentator: Smith is playing crass politics, scuffling off a sinking ship, positioning himself for re-election in 2008, or baring his soul, choosing his time for maximum pressure on President Bush, a personal expression of a sweep of time or coming to reasoned analysis, a brandishing of the law (or not), called "blistering" and sorrowful - take your pick of those and more.

You can find support for all in Smith's Senate floor speech.

The fact that you can find so many of these things, and more, and counters to most of them, suggests the key point about his talk: It's incoherence. Read the whole thing, and while the emotions - sadness, most notably - leap out, but you'll trie yourself into a prezel to draw conclusions beyond that.

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