Scoundrel Time

Well he did better than Britney Spears.

General Petraeus dazzled the media and the Republicans on the two panels with his looks, his testimony, and his charts. And everyone in the Great and the Good agreed that the real issue of the day was that ad in the NY TIMES from those mean people at MoveOn calling this fine public servant "General Betray Us" - such lack of manners.!  David Gergen had the vapors, Joe Lieberman was more in sorrow than anger. And the Republicans? Well they got on their high horse - of which there is none higher - and demanded that the Democrats surrender and repudiate Eli Parriser and all his works. And , shamefully, some did.

(Note to Dems: Does the term "Swift Boat Vets for Truth" ring a bell? You really don't want to be taking instruction on political etiquette from these folks!)

Now to the General's testimony. Well Good news! We're making progress! Who would have thought it? Just look at Anbar Province! The General told us that as late as six months ago no one would have dared to predict the kind of progress we made there.

(Actually General, you would. At least that's what you told the media last Spring)

And the Good General brought nice colored charts to show the reduction in violence. Trouble is the charts didn't gibe with other reports (see TALKING POINTS MEMO) but they were so pretty! And how about the one showing that there would be a troop reduction? Yes, the boys are coming home! A Marine Expeditionary Unit this fall and an Army Cobat Brigade by December.  Whay that's almost 5,000 personnel! Thank  you Sen. Warner! And the trend line showed more reductions to follow.

Two points:

1. Since Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Army Chief of Staff have made it clear that the number of combat brigades in country was unsustainable past next spring this comes under the heading of  facing the inevitable. Or finding lemons and making lemonaide!

2. If you check the chart  - I know its so pretty - you'll notice that it takes till the middle of 2008 to finish the reductions and then you're right back at a force of 138,000 - which is where we were when the "surge" started.

Oh, there were other contradictions - go to the usual suspects to find out what they were. Just don't expect anyone in the Press (other than those pesky McClatchy people) to point it out to you. Richard Lardner of the AP just threw up his hands. How could he tell what was right?

And here's an item that did not come up in questioning today to either Petraeus or Crocker. The other day David Corn of the NATION sat down with the Chief Judge of the the Iraqi Court - Rahdi el Rahdi - who told him he was exiling himself from Baghdad as the Maliki government was so corrupt that only its complete removal would suffice. Remember this whole excercise in surging was supposed to provide space for poliical renewal. And as Corn puts it if you think that corruption doesn't matter recall the name "Diem."

The questions were, for the most part terrible. A lot of posturing and little follow up. The Dems showing concern and the Reeps wraping themselves in the flag and the General's stanchion. Eliot Engel did ask the General about an op ed piece he wrote in the POST in Sept. 2004 that even Michael O'Hanlon found too optimistic. But Petraeus side-stepped that and no one thought to bring it up. Just as no one challenged his opening words that he wrote this all by himself with no help from anyone! Did anyone ask of the "War Room"? Whether or not he met with Ed Gillespie ? Or those 17 meetings in Iraq in August that TALKING POINTS MEMO called "political Cheerleading?"

Look today was just what Digby has been calling it for weeks - a Kubuki.

And the polls show the public ain't buying it. But it looks like the media went for it hook, line and sinker.  All day I kept hearing of the "Masterful" performance. And that may be enough for cowardly Democrats afraid of their shadow and afraid of looking "Week on Terror" and "Not supporting the Troops". They're afraid of that "Stab in the Back" charge and think the polling data is bunk.

Well it isn't and if you want to do something about it you can join FIREDOGLAKE, Glenn Greenwald at SALON, and others and sign a petition to be sent to the leadership. It says you're not fooled by the General's dog-and-pony show and you want action. You can go to those sites or you can go here:

   http://action.openleft.com/page/petition/dc

Its up to you now. Up to us really.

Comments

[Tambopaxi]

Rich,

I went to the link you show and left my comments there.

Same comments here, though: If we really expect to see any effective oppo from the Dems, the only thing I can figure is that we'll have to stage some sort of bottom up revolt within that party, a la 1968 to change its spineless leadership.

Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, etc., are simply hopeless and we cannot count on these people to come up with any sort of imaginative, let alone, determined, approach to whipping the Republicans, getting us out of Iraq, and restoring some semblance of equity for the middle class in our country. Dems have contented themselves with becoming Repubs lite. The Dem leadership didn't win control (barely) of Congress so much as Bush y cia lost it.