Tag: David Petraeus

And our plan to nuke Iran is shaping up nicely too.

At the outset I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by nor shared with anyone in the Pentagon, the White House or the Congress until it was just handed out.

— General David Petraeus, 9/10/07

General Petraeus employed thirteen slides in his opening remarks to the joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, yesterday.  A PDF of them can be found here.

Many people have noted that the slides concerning the frequency of insurgent attacks and “ethno-sectarian violence” were misleading.  However, it seems to me that the very first slide, a map of the region labeled “Major Threats to Iraq”, is more revealing of the limits of General Petraeus’s independence, the decidely pragmatic nature of the hearings, and the meaning of the occupation of Iraq itself, than any other.

according to the CSPAN website, the hearing will air on cspan3, online at this link, and on cspan radio which is available online in multiple formats.  time listed is 12:30 pm edt. 

this is the cspan website description of today’s hearing:

Joint Committee
Status of War in Iraq
Armed Services
Foreign Affairs
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 200890 – 09/10/2007 – 6:00 – No Sale

  Skelton, Ike U.S. Representative, D-MO
  Lantos, Tom U.S. Representative, D-CA
  Petraeus, David H. Commander, Multinational Force-Iraq
  Crocker, Ryan C. Ambassador, United States, Iraq

A Joint Committee hearing on the status of the war in Iraq and political developments there was held to hear a report by the commanding general and the U.S. ambassador on conditions in Iraq.

really catches the scope and feeling of the whole thing, doesnt it?  (that line is blatantly paraphrased from ‘harry potter and the deathly hallows’)

At Talk Left, I wrote a piece describing what I believe would be the most effective manner for Democrats to deal with the Petraeus Show coming to a Congress near you this week. I’ll post the text on the flip.

But I wanted to make a point first. To wit, Petraeus and his Surge is nothing but bullshit. I assume we all know this but we have seen and will see a lot of “serious” discussion about it. Let’s be clear, there is no hope for a good ending for the United States in Iraq. It is a Debacle and there is nothing that will change that, short of, perhaps, a reconquering of Iraq, conscription of a million Americans and World War III in the Middle East. Of course such an approach would not only be lunacy, it will never happen (just as war with Iran UNCONNECTED to Iraq will never happen).

So all this “serious” talk is unserious and ridiculous in the extreme. Take for instance, via Yglesias, this discussion by two of the more foolish “serious” people we encounter in these discussions, Packer and Dodge:

Dodge’s grim vision does not make an irrefutable case for staying in Iraq. But it’s a reminder that the illusions and naïve hopes with which America started the war shouldn’t accompany its end. [WTF? We should persist in illusions and naive hopes as a basis for foreign policy? Quintessential idiocy from Packer.]

. . . This doesn’t mean keeping large numbers of troops in Iraq indefinitely; that has become impossible. David Kilcullen argued that next summer, when the surge is scheduled to end, American forces could be reduced to a level-say, eighty thousand-that might allow most of the core interests to be protected. . . . [W]hen the surge ends, there will have to be a strategic turn, away from Americans in the lead. An indefinite war in Iraq “costs us moral authority across the world,” Kilcullen said. The occupation of Iraq remains hugely unpopular with America’s democratic allies and throughout the Arab and Muslim world. “We need that moral authority as ammunition in the fight against Al Qaeda,” he added. “If we’re not down to fifty thousand troops in three to five years, we’ve lost the war on terror.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Can you believe this shit? Can you believe these idiot “serious” people make a claim for the US having moral authority in the war on terror? After torture, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and the the rest? These are the elites of this country we are told. If you wonder how we came to this end, just think of WHAT THESE PEOPLE SAY NOW!! If we can not defeat these “elites” politically, we are simply fucked as a country.

More.