Hassling the Hofe.

• Position: Ten Miles Square - James Inhofe

If you're a senator with reservations about our policy in Iraq, maybe you should listen more to James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe has traveled to Iraq to observe the situation firsthand, and he wishes that his colleagues would disregard negative press coverage and pay more attention to some of the good news from the region. Therefore, in the interests of fairness, the Washington Monthly has compiled all of Senator Inhofe's reporting as shared, repeatedly, with his colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now we, too, can perhaps see the other side of the story:

I've been there quite a few times, twice in the last three months. And you know, you go over like in the Sunni triangle, the experience over there with General Madhi, who used to--all of you know him-he used to be the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein in Fallujah. He hated Americans, and he's been training, embedded training, with our Marines. And he looked at us and said, when the Marines had to rotate and go out, he actually cried. Here is a general that just hated Americans under Saddam Hussein, and he has actually renamed his Iraqi security forces the "Fallujah Marines."

-- JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, June 25, 2005

And as I go over there, and I've been over there many times, the first thing that is said to me by the troops--these are Marines and Army--is, "Why is it that they don't like us?"--and they're talking about the media--"Why is it that people back home don't have a clear picture of our successes?" If we could just have the picture of these guys in Fallujah--General Madhi, who was actually a brigade commander for Saddam Hussein, who is now the brigade commander for the Iraqi security forces--he was so impressed with what the Marines were doing there that he changed the name to the "Fallujah Marines." And here's a guy who hated Americans before then. It's all because of the embedded training with the Marines.

-- JAMES INHOFE, HEARING OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, June 30, 2005

If you rely on the media and the distorted way in which the media is reporting what's going on there, you're not going to get a very good idea of what's really going on. I can remember so well spending one whole trip in the Sunni triangle, in Fallujah, just talked to the troops there ... And the former brigade commander that hated Americans--he was a brigade commander for Saddam Hussein--now, after having experienced embedded training with our...