Jim Webb

You know, I had mixed feelings about Jim Webb at the outset. Of course, I was willing to support any Democrat over any Republican, given the times we live in, and the fact that Webb was running against a true asshole made that decision even easier. However, since he's taken office, my admiration for the man simply grows and grows. BarbinMD at DailyKos has the latest. Here's a sampling from the Gates hearings:

And Webb wasn't quite ready to get to his questions. He went on to say:

I also want to say something about my longtime friend, Senator McCain's comments when he was talking about the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and in your statement, Secretary Gates, you list some of these as an emboldened and strengthened Iran, a base of operations for jihadist networks in the heart of the Middle East, an undermining of the credibility of the United States. In many ways, quite frankly, those have been the results of the invasion and occupation. There's really nothing that's occurred since the invasion and occupation that was not predictable and in fact, most of it was predicted. It was predicted in many cases by people with long backgrounds in national security...and in many cases there were people who saw their military careers destroyed and who were personally demeaned by people who opposed them on the issues, including members of this administration. And they are people in my judgement, who will be remembered in history as having had a moral conscience.