Inhofe sees a ‘miracle’ in Iraq

The Senate Majority Project brings our attention to the latest nonsense from one of the Senate’s most embarrassing members: Oklahoma Republican James [tag]Inhofe[/tag].

Contrary to most reports, Inhofe said, many Iraqis are pleased about the U.S. intervention. “[tag]Iraq[/tag]i security forces now number 275,000 trained and equipped,” he said. “The commanders in the field and the Iraqis say when this reaches 325,000, that would equal 10 divisions, and that’s what we need to take care of our own security.”

Inhofe has visited Iraq 11 times.

“What’s happened there is nothing short of a miracle,” he said.

A “[tag]miracle[/tag].” He did not appear to be kidding.

Indeed, Inhofe was on quite a roll in his interview with the Tulsa World. He went on to defend the “bridge to nowhere,” the $320 million project in Alaska that Inhofe’s Oklahoma colleague Tom Coburn tried to kill.

The span connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, to an island with 50 inhabitants has been cited by critics across the political spectrum as an example of government waste, but Inhofe called it an example of “one of the few things in Washington that works.”

Given this guy’s recent history, I guess none of this should come as a surprise.

In just the past few months, Inhofe has:

* compared those who are worried about global warming to Nazis;

* announced on the Senate floor that he’s “proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship.”

* tried to make English the “official” language;

* held a hearing on “the role of science in environmental policy making,” and called novelist Michael Crichton as an expert witness.

If we held a competition for most embarrassing senator, and we narrowed the list down to Inhofe, Burns, Santorum, Roberts, and Stevens, it’d be a really tough call, wouldn’t it?

Isn’t Inhole the guy who was “wistful” for the days of the cold war? Kind of telling — most people are “wistful” for peace.

  • From Pennsylvania: Hopefully we will help reduce the size of that list of embarrassing senators in about 10 weeks.

  • I’ve got to go with Stevens as the most embarrassing. Frankly, I can’t even remember what Burns did, and the others are just typical Republican’ts.

  • Over the past 30 years the GOP built an electoral machine so powerful it could elect candidates despite their demonstrable incompetence and unsuitability. Their rhetoric is embarassingly stupid, but it they are just figureheads.

    The real intelligence is underneath, in the lobbyists who write legislation and the political strategists who sell it, using a vast and disciplined propaganda network, who work with an electorate preconditioned to accept right wing memes, frames and spin. It’s an amazing achievment, really.

    These officeholders are just ciphers, and their idiocy is more of a feature than a bug. They are easy for their right wing masters to manipulate, and there’s no danger that they (unlike, say, some Watergate-era Republicans) will have an attack of conscience when the time comes to quash a burgeoning GOP scandal.

  • WE’RE JUST BAT SHIT CRAZY IN OKLAHOMA, OLE TOM AND JIM ARE SOME OF THE LEVEL HEADED CREW….PASS ME THAT JUG O CRUDE OIL MAW!!!!!

  • I agree with Lance. The others are just kooks (or so boring it doesn’t matter). Stevens is dangerous.

    However, if you’re lucky, there’s an antidote to every poison. Our state’s Senator Maria Cantwell managed to smack down Stevens’ backdoor attempt to pass ANWR. Yayyy! I don’t like her vote on the Quagmire, but everything else about her is great, especially her David role to Stevens’ Goliath.

    She definitely needs the support of all Democrats and reasonable people everywhere if she’s going to render ineffective Safeco’s illegal $28.4 million contribution to McGavick’s campaign.

  • “If we hadn’t approved that, the money would have still gone to Alaska,” Inhofe said. “We would have just told them they couldn’t use it on that bridge.”

    Really?? You couldn’t think of ANYTHING else to spend the money on? Better security along the Pipeline?
    Or, in light of recent events, increased inspection of the Pipeline?

    The Army couldn’t use the money to update facilities at Ft. Wainwright and Ft. Richardson?

    What construction company bribed the GOP for the funding, anyway?

    As for Iraq, so is the good Senator sayinng that we can expect US and coalition forces to leave soon?

  • The frightening thing is that, in the Oklahoma Senatorial delegation, Inhofe is really the ‘lesser of two evils.’ He is so obviously crazy and ridiculous that I doubt if he has any influence. He’s looked on as the sort of embarrassment that sometimes gets elected, like John Marshall Butler and Bill “Dumbest Man in Congess” Scott.

    Its Tom Coburn that is the scary one, because he comes across as a reasonably intelligent and rational person until you listen to the words he is actually speaking.

  • Steve:

    You should hold a contest to see which state has the worst pair of Senators. I’m from Georgia and our Senators are only quietly embarrassing. Pennsylvania would definitely be in the running with Santorum and Specter (Specter talks a good game but never follows through; we all know about Santorum), and Alaska and Utah would definitely contend (Hatch is absolutely despicable) but I do believe Oklahoma would win.

  • Embarrassing?

    What about Lisa Murkowski of Alaska?

    According to an an article in todays NYT… her daddy assigned her his Senate seat after he gave it up and became Governor.

    That sort of nepotism goes way beyond shame… and into the realm of hereditary realms.

    It is sickening…

  • Visited 11 times and he is still and idiot.

    He has obviously:
    1) never left the Green Zone,
    2) never met an Iraq that wasn’t pre-screened to within an inch of his life,
    3) doesn’t have a clue that those he meets have been pre-screened,
    4) that there is a life out side of the Green Zone that doesn’t match his prescreened visit.

  • As a Virginian I am insulted by your leaving George Allen off the list of most embarrassing senators. The man’s a yahoo, a certified racist and all round creepy guy. He’s got something to say about everything and knows nothing. He’s actually bad enough to be considered Republican Presidential Material, and that’s saying a lot!

  • What construction company bribed the GOP for the funding, anyway?

    Actually, the payoff is even simpler – much of the land which would likely increase greatly in value if the projects went through are owned by various Stevenses and relatives of Rep. Don Young…

    Embarrassing?

    What about Lisa Murkowski of Alaska?

    While her manner of appointment was unseemly, she’s been a far better Senator than her father, (she gets grief up here for not being conservative enough on social issues) IIRC she was also one of the GOP Senators who have been consistently good on the torture issue.

    She also won re-election quite (and surprisingly) handily, whomping Tony Knowles who was a very popular 2-term governor (and presumptive front-runner for term #3 this year) – she’s considerably more popular than pops, who as Steve noted, got demolished in the primary (distant third)

  • Instead of building the bridge, why don’t they just pay each of the fifty inhabitants of the island $2 million to move to the mainland? They’d save $230 million dollars! 😉

  • In researching the issue, it seems that the people of Ketchikan (population, roughly 8900) went and had themselves an “international airport” built on Gravina Island. It’s only a wee ferry-ride from one point to the other, and some of the locals clamoured to the Congressional delegation about the $6-per-car fee for the ferry-trip.

    This “airport” has one main runway group: length just under 7,500 feet. That is not enough room for a heavy jumbo, and it was built in the “heyday” of the Boeing model 707 model. It’ll handle 727s in a pinch, with little-to-no room for error. Documentation on the site includes common reports of turbulence and wind-shear from adjacent mountains, problems with deer, and large bird problems for pilots on final or take-off.

    With current models of commercial aircraft being too large for its runways, and with the bigger planes having much greater range, the airport itself seems a boondoggle; building a bridge to it is fiscal insanity….

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