The "Petraeus" Report

“I believe Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us assessment of the strategy that he's putting in place before they make any decisions." -- George Bush, July 10, 2007

By now you've probably heard the news that the report on Iraqi progress we've been expecting in September from General Petraeus is actually going to be written by the White House, with "input" from "officials throughout government."

  TPM

And why not? Petraeus would have just had to write what they wanted him to anyway. On the other hand, they let Gonzo pretend he's coming up with his own material.

I seem to recall Bubble Boy getting testy with members of the press about waiting until we hear from Petraeus. TPM has a list of quotes from the WH indicating the report was to be coming from Petraeus.

I just watched the McNeil/Lehrer report* with a panel discussion of the "progress" since the "surge", and it was unanimous: the surge was meant to hold down violence so that the political process in Iraq could have a chance to work; but not only is the political situation not getting any better, it's actually deteriorating. I have a feeling that the "progress report" next month is going to cite everything but the political situation.

The Petraeus report angle was just a ploy to quiet the Democrats. They always fall for it.

But don't worry. We'll have Iran to work on soon enough.

*Okay, it was probably the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. I don't know; it was a PBS show, and actually there wasn't any Jim Lehrer, either. There was a woman hosting it. She was talking with Juan Cole, Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, an ex-Iraqi ambassador and some other ex-diplomat. So do you really want to take my word for anything?

Update: Well, you don't have to. I found the transcript: Online NewsHour

And here is Juan Cole's closing summary:

I think that we've got excellent personnel in Iraq. Ryan Crocker is an experienced ambassador to the region. General David Petraeus is among our best officers, especially on counterterrorism. But the task that they have been given is just insuperable.

You know, the number of Iraqis killed went up 25 percent in July over June. The number of troops killed in July was twice what it ordinarily has been in July. It depends on how you look at these numbers. There have been fewer big bombings; although, there still are big bombings, but there have been more people killed by sniper fire.

So the violence has not subsided, and the guerrilla resistance in the Sunni Arab regions is still very powerful. And there's no sign of a political solution to this thing, which is the only real solution to this kind of guerrilla war. So I'm afraid I don't think, if the report is honest, we're going to see a lot of progress here.

And now we know who's writing the report, we can be pretty certain it won't be honest.