Jack Reed: “I stand to support the position of Senator Levin with respect to the nomination of Dorrance Smith to be Assistant…”

“I stand to support the position of Senator Levin with respect to the nomination of Dorrance Smith to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. I, too, participated in his hearings. I listened to Mr. Smith, and I think he lacks the judgment necessary to be the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Senator Levin has quoted the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. This was not the example of making an offhand statement. This is not the situation where someone was being quizzed and extemporaneously suggested something that later one regrets. This was a very carefully crafted editorial which was sent to the Wall Street Journal for publication. In it, Mr. Smith says: Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S. Mr. President, can you think of a more provocative and a more incendiary comment, to suggest that anyone is equivalent, by extension, to bin Laden and al-Zarqawi? That is essentially what he said about the media in the United States. I believe it represents extremely poor judgment. Perhaps that is why he is getting the job, because we have heard before these very loose suggestions that somebody is just like Zarqawi, somebody is just like that. We also heard coming out of the Department of Defense the notion that we have problems not because of strategic mistakes that have been made, we have problems because the media just doesn't get the story right.…”