Senator Webb Uses Blackwater As Excuse to Get Free Travel for Wife and Kid

Senator Jim Webb says he's holding up the nominations of four Pentagon officials because the Defense Department isn't giving him answers about Blackwater, but the real reason seems to be that he's cranked that DoD won't fly his wife and child to Southeast Asia at taxpayer expense.

Webb's third and current wife is a native of South Vietnam.

The Virginia Democrat's request for their free travel on a Senate junket is in violation of Senate rules and Defense Department policy.

"A Senate Republican aide said, 'Webb is suggesting that he is holding nominations as punishment for not getting answers back from questions relating to Blackwater, but in reality, it is leverage to get the Secretary to let his wife and eighteen month old both accompany him on this trip,'" Erick Erickson writes in Human Events.

"With the Secretary of Defense’s admonition to Senator Webb that 'Senate travel is governed by a memo signed by the Senate leadership dated March 9, 2007, specifically stating that relatives other than spouses are not permitted to travel with Senate delegations' and 'DoD Directive 4515.12 prescribes policy for DoD travel support for members of Congress' in a manner reflecting the Senate policy, Senator Webb has run out of legitimate reasons for his holds," Erickson reports.

Human Events Takes Blackwater Critics to Task

Human Events reports that

The Iraq Veterans Against the War held their Winter Soldier II event this weekend at the National Labor College. The implied intent of this event was to give testimony to a myriad of claimed atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq.... Additional time was spent on the left’s obvious and expected platitudes: no blood for oil, Halliburton and Blackwater are evil capitalists, etc., nothing you wouldn’t expect to hear at a Code Pink den meeting.

Remember, this is the same organization to which Jesse Macbeth belonged, until his claims his unit routinely committed war crimes in Iraq were debunked when it was proved he never finished basic training.

Author Katie O'Malley explains

Not surprisingly, [the event] fell far short of its intent.... My conclusions after hearing and reading hours upon hours of the testimony? War is hell. Bad things happen. People get hurt. Sometimes innocents get caught in the fire. As to the specifics that IVAW members alleged, perhaps a few things were questionable and they should certainly be investigated. The rest of the anecdotal stories confirmed nothing more except that in war, unfortunate things happen. This was a collection of war stories, not the exposure of war crimes.

This methodology is to be expected, really. When you don't have an actual argument, the best way to give the impression of one is to throw out some stories, find some "eye witnesses" - even if they weren't witnesses to the events you're alleging - and dance around the subject long enough that those not paying careful attention will connect the dots in the way you want. Thanks, Katie, for seeing through the smoke and mirrors.