I fell for Lindsey Graham during the Impeachment hearings back in ’98 when he was still a Congressman. I used to talk to him after the hearings. The things I love about him are: he’s independent-minded, incredibly gifted politically, and he has the common touch. He’s a populist with a soft way about him, till he gets his dander up. “Is this Peyton Place or is this Watergate?” he used to say during the impeachment proceedings. (He and I both thought it was Watergate, because of the way that Clinton’s women got kneecapped if they thought of speaking out.)
It’s time for Senator Graham, who had a military career as an Air Force lawyer, to follow the example of Congressman Walter Jones across the border in North Carolina, and come out against the Iraq war. Declare the Bush strategy a failure, change the mission now, end the occupation, seek a regional concert, some international answer to this disaster rather than trudging deeper and deeper into the big muddy. Graham has the political capital to strike a bigger blow than John Murtha. And every day he waits, more American kids get killed in the name of what?
