Brunch with Loretta Sanchez

My wife, son and I spent a few hours today at a fundraiser for Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez who represents the 47th District of California. It was held at the home of some good friends of ours, who, like us, don't live in Sanchez's district, but were ecstatic years ago when she took the seat of Republican pain-in-the-ass Bob Dornan. Sanchez was the first Democrat in many years to make inroads into the heavily Republican bastion of Orange County. After a wonderful brunch, Congresswoman Sanchez spoke for about a half hour and then took about a half hour of questions from the assembled group.

Although she talked about the shift in power in Washington from Texas to California, global warming and pollution and the economics of Bush's reign of terror, most of her talk and most of the questions were about Iraq. She had some very interesting things to say.

She talked about the vote in the House on Friday, which for the first time had congress pushing back against Bush and setting limitations on military appropriations. She said that although many have called the vote historic, she doesn't see it that way. She said that in recent meetings, top military officials made it clear that the U.S. military is in a state of disarray and disrepair unseen in decades. She said that Bush took a fully functioning military and ran it into the ground in Iraq. Every general she talked to, with the sole exception of General Petraeus, said it is a foregone conclusion that we must leave Iraq and soon. Not because we can't win, though we obviously can't, but because this war has needlessly decimated our military and it can no longer sustain the fight.

She said that she thinks it is only a matter of months before General Petraeus agrees with everyone else and that will be the end of it. Sanchez said that she feels troops could start coming home as early as this summer. That is why she thinks the House vote was not as important as many others do; vote or no vote, this thing is nearly over. It has to be, our military is in such horrible shape it cannot continue.

Next time I'll tell you about Loretta's three trips to Iraq and what deterioration she has seen and her response to the question, a Republican favorite, "But what happens to Iraq if we leave before we are done?"