Petraeus Punts

Can I be the first to call this a Petraeus Unit (P.U.)?

In his opening remarks, Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq war commander, told the Senate panel there has been "significant but uneven security progress" in Iraq and the situation remains fragile.

The general recommended a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" in July before deciding when to resume troop reductions and said current troop reductions will continue through July.

Wasn't this supposed to be the evaluation? Oh, it doesn't matter. It's only a few dozen lives and billion dollars.

How long before John McCain starts recommending P.U.s?

The Iraq War: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying.

General Hack

This calls for more MoveOn ads:

The U.S. military commander in Iraq stepped up accusations over the weekend that Iran was inciting violence there and said Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Qods force.

...

General David Petraeus, speaking at a U.S. military base about 30 km (20 miles) from the Iranian border on Saturday, said Iran was giving militia groups advanced weaponry and guidance.

"They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers," Petraeus told a group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing U.S. troops.

Since allowing himself to become a mouthpiece for the Bush administration, Petraeus has lost all credibility. Prior scaremongering tactics about Iranian intervention has already been debunked; similarly, a skeptical eye should be turned towards this. If Petraeus is worried about where militia groups got a hold of advanced weaponry, he might want to spend some time pondering about the huge U.S. weapons stores that magically disappeared, like magical September.

They Wouldn't Lie

Would they?

Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.

I will evaluate whether or not I should think about not trusting the government in six months time.

Standing by the Generals

But which one?

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

Bill O'Reilly's going to form a lynch mob.

(emphasis mine)