Iraq's reconstruction is going better than is portrayed by the news media

[sfc_darrel]

"Rep. George Nethercutt said yesterday that Iraq's reconstruction is going better than is portrayed by the news media, citing his recent four-day trip to the country," reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

"It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."

He added that he did not want any more soldiers to be killed.

Nethercutt, a Spokane Republican, is running for the Senate seat currently held by the woman some say is the dimmest member of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body, Patty Murray. As we noted last year, Murray has described Osama bin Laden as a philanthropist: "He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that."

Not that Murray necessarily wants us to do that. On Sept. 27 she delivered the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address, and she sounded like a right-wing crank railing against foreign aid: "While . . . families struggle to make ends meet, they are watching billions of their tax dollars go to rebuild Iraq. . . . Democrats have proposed policies that will get us back on track. . . . Investments will be made in America first, not last."

Murray is not consistently bad on national security. To her credit, yesterday she joined seven other Democrats and all 51 Republicans in voting to table an amendment by Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan to divert $5 billion from Iraq reconstruction and spend it on domestic pork.

Still, the good people of Washington state could do the country a service, and spare themselves six years' worth of further embarrassment, by firing Murray a year from now. In a state that voted for Michael Dukakis, Nethercutt is an underdog; Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball lists the Murray seat as "likely Democratic"--one step short of "solid." Then again, Nethercutt was an underdog in 1994 too, when the incumbent Democrat he beat was no less then House Speaker Tom Foley.