Windy days ahead

Sen. Joseph Biden says he will try to block President Bush from sending more troops to Iraq. Biden, who now heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says he will hold hearings next month in the hope of persuading the president not to carry through with the “troop surge” he is said to be planning.
There are grounds for questioning the wisdom of such a surge, and it’s possible that serious hearings on the subject would be beneficial. Unfortunately, there are also grounds for questioning whether Biden’s hearings will be serious, particularly when “Talkin’ Joe” issues sound bites like this one: “we’ve already broken Iraq; we’re about to break the U.S. military.”
Increasing the troop level in Iraq by 30,000 or so may or may not be a good idea, but the notion that doing so will “break” (rather than just strain) the U.S. military is laughable. And if Biden believes that Iraq under the mass murderer Saddam Hussein wasn’t fundamentally “broken,” then he doesn’t share enough common ground with President Bush to have any hope of persuading him of anything.