He Can Feel It

The Joementum, that is. Senator Lieberman was in Baghdad licking his finger and holding it ever so carefully to the wind, just not high enough over the sandbags that a sniper could take it off, to determine whether the elections can be held.

"There is a real possibility that this will go off without a real hitch," Lieberman said. "We've got some momentum here that we can encourage and support. It holds some hope of a real breakthrough."

And he ought to know momentum.

Lieberman travelled to Iraq with Senator Mark Dayton on a fact-finding mission. And, evidently, to hold the feet of some of those nervous nellies to the fire.

"Senator Lieberman and I had a pretty clear indication from the deputy prime minister and a couple of his associates that at least some of them may be wanting to find a reason to postpone the election," said Sen. Mark Dayton (news, bio, voting record), D-Minn. "We emphasized that we thought it was imperative that the election be held as scheduled."

Yeah, I mean, if we don't have the elections then we lose our cover on why we're there (at least why we're there NOW). If we leave before elections then the whole enterprise looks like a failure. Jeez. Don't they get it?

Ol' Joe thinks the enterprise might just be working!

"Postponement would be taken as a victory by the terrorists and it would be an infuriating result for the majority of the country that wants to vote," Lieberman said. "Nobody thinks this is going to be perfect or neat, but it will be a beginning, a very credible beginning."

He also met with some troops from his home state whose morale, he reports, is high. So he doesn't want to hear anymore of this carping about armor. Rumsfeld already addressed the issue.

He said he did not hear any soldiers complaining that their vehicles were not fully armored, adding that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld answered that concern earlier this month.

Yeah, the preznit said they would all have their armor by next summer.

Well, I have looked at the statistics on that, and we have stepped up the production of armored Humvees significantly. The other issue is the rearmament of existing -- of vehicles that are now in theater, vehicles that require a different armament structure than that which they initially were manufactured with. And I am told that those vehicles will be armed up by mid-summer of 2005. And what I know is, is that the Defense Department is working expeditiously with private contractors and with our military to get these vehicles armed up.

I sure feel better with Ol' Joe in the Senate. Oh wait, I almost forgot, it's Bush and Rumsfeld that feel better with him in the Senate.