Looks like #Petraeus was doing some extra 'surging'!

David Petraeus
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CIA director, former Iraq War "surge" "genius" and former Afghanistan commander David Petraeus can now add "former" before his CIA title. He's announced his resignation, allegedly over an extramarital affair. Guess that spartan Army discipline of cold showers, 4 hours of sleep and such didn't pay off in the end, eh?

Here's Team Obama's initial reaction:

CIA Director David Petraeus has resigned, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a written statement Friday. The former Army general, who rocketed to global prominence as the man in charge of the "surge" in Iraq, quit over an extramarital affair, MSNBC reported.

"Today, CIA Director David Petraeus submitted his letter of resignation to the President," Clapper wrote. "Dave's decision to step down represents the loss of one of our nation's most respected public servants.

"From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one's country," continued Clapper, whose statement did not specify a reason for the decision.

Well, the White House didn't lay it on too thick.

The Guardian is doing a live feed of ongoing comment. Let's see what else is being said.

Other fallout? Obama will ask Leon Panetta to stay on a while at the Defense Department. Obama will look for somebody relatively young, highly "techie" and a fan of drones as Petraeus' replacement. MSNBC is saying Deputy Director Mike Morrell is a candidate for getting the job permanently. NBC broke the story and has Petraeus' resignation letter there.

And, I wonder how it found out. Interesting.

And, speaking of "surges," we obviously won't have a Petraeus for President push on the 2016 GOP side.

And, just maybe, his wife could look at those old MoveOn "Betrayus" ads?

Slate says it was his recent biographer that he was diddling. I've read "All In," and it was as gushing as hell. Now I know why. I did not know the title was literally true. And the subtitle of "The Education of David Petraeus" has some Lady Chatterly wink-wink to it, too.

It had long been rumored that something was going on between Petraeus and Broadwell. Her book, co-written with Vernon Loeb, is widely regarded as a valentine to the general. When she was embedded with him in Afghanistan, they went on frequent 5-mile runs together.

Hey, "embedded" gets a whole new meaning, too!

Meanwhile, at least one left-liberal I know on FB is saying he doesn't believe this "official story" of Petraeus' resigning as CIA director. Great. Another liberal conspiracy theory.

Look, as I said, I found "All In" very gushy six months ago, and now I know why.

'All In' for Gen. #Betrayus

From my Goodreads review of a book you can wait to read:

While there are "sympathetic" biographies in a good sense, like Robert K. Massie's new bio of Catherine the Great, there are sympathetic bios that aren't so good. And this is one of them.

It's not quite craptacular, but it's nowhere near a "critical" study. Written by a West Point grad, and, as one other reviewer notes, some sort of "authorized" bio, it's got enough of a suck-up attitude that it doesn't question him at all. (The type of people who blurb it on the back, starting with Tom Brokaw, also indicate the quasi suck-up nature.)

For example, did the "surge" in Iraq, combined with the Anbar Awakening, really work, in part, because a fair amount of Sunni ethnic cleansing had already played out, and in part because some awakeners were content to take some cold U.S. cash and bide their time? Author Paula Broadwell never asks these questions, either rhetorically or of her subject.

Nor does she address the questions of whether or not Petraeus is a "political general." (Short answer: Every general is, at least within the Army; career bird colonels are the ones who aren't.)

Also, given the subject matter, it's "interesting" that Broadwell apparently made no attempt to see if anybody would talk off the record about Afghanistan, or Iraq, issues. That goes in hand with a quasi-"approved" bio. Surely a two-star or three-star not in the Petraeus mentorship pipeline would have talked anonymously if Broadwell had wanted to pursue that angle.

Beyond that, it's bland in that we don't learn much new from this book. Pass. Wait 10 years, until he retires (I hope) from the CIA, and see if a real bio is out.

Petraeus to run CIA? Ugh

Hell, if Obama is serious about this, we should just name Gen. David Petraeus the shadow president, the foreign policy president or whatever and be done with it.

Yet another good reason to vote Green in 2012.

Surely, Petraeus will push for continuation of counterinsurgency of some sort in Afghanistan, any sort of continued backdoor presence in Iraq and more that we don't even know about.

A Politico op-ed "agrees" to the point of noting Obama is more changed by, than changing, Washington:

President Barack Obama’s nominations of Leon Panetta as defense secretary and Gen. David Petraeus as director of central intelligence demonstrate that the president has abandoned his pledge to change U.S. foreign policy. In fact, these nominations show that Washington has changed Obama far more than he has changed Washington.

Obama long insisted that he wants to reorient America’s focus — moving it away from nation-building projects in the Islamic world and toward Asia. He also insists he wants to trim military spending. But if Petraeus heads CIA and Panetta becomes defense secretary, it’s unlikely either will happen.

As I noted above, Petraeus will certainly push for COIN under some name.

Re Petraeus, Politico also asks if the CIA wouldn't be better served by an East Asia (read "China") hand? Agreed.

Plus, Politico even accuses Obama of "blathering."

In fact, these nominations, combined with other evidence, strongly suggest that Obama views foreign policy primarily as an instrument of domestic politics — an opportunity to give soaring speeches about the grand sweep of history and his view of America’s role in it.

THAT assessment certainly gets no argument from me. That said, it's coming from somebody who works at Cato.

But, I agree with Logan on the need for a China focus rather than "Global War on Terror."

Spiegel's must-read on U.S. military's Afghan kill teams

I hadn't gotten myself fully up to speed on the issue, but, Der Spiegel is all over the issue that American media are still (with the exception, overall, of McClatchy) slow to address. That issue is the "kill teams" ... the issue that at least in some military units, soldiers are not just heartless toward but ready to brutally kill Afghan civilians.

First, per one soldier, Adam Wingfield, who was concerned about it, the "kill, kill, kill" attitude sounds kind of common:

There are people in my platoon that can get away with 'murder.' They planned and went through with it. ... Pretty much the whole platoon knows about it. It's OK with all of them pretty much, except me. I want to do something about it, the only problem is I don't feel safe here telling anyone.

Meanwhile, despite Gen. Petraeus' allegedly having concern for Afghan civilians as part of his counterinsurgency, how well is he working to INSIST that message percolates down? Maybe not totally?

Winfield again:

I have to make up my mind. Should I do the right thing and put myself in danger, or should I just shut up and deal with it? The army really let me down out here. When I thought I would come here to do any good, maybe make some change in this country, I find out it is all a lie. There are no good men left here.

What brought this attitude on?

Can we, like FiredogLake, say it's all a "hate industry" at home?

No. To the degree this is hate-based, racial and ethnic hatred have never needed an "industry" to fuel them. If anything, any causal correlation is the other way.

Second, the military trains people to kill. After actual stories (whether close to true or not) that in World War I, very few riflemen actually fired to kill, armies around the world ever since have worked on molding soldiers into psychologically "better" killers. There's not necessarily any ethnic hatred involved. That said, it makes it harder to have uniformed soldiers be the lead on counterinsurgency, especially when their mission is hugely undermanned, putting them on edge in an uncertain countryside all the time.

Adam's mom, Emma, and another military mom talks about that:

For the soldiers of the 5th Stryker Brigade, the new COIN strategy was a non-starter, says Audrey Morlock, Jeremy's mother. The Army didn't provide her son with training for this strategy, she says. "For three years, my boy was only trained (to do) one thing -- kill, kill, kill." The Winfields also have the impression that the requirements for the soldiers which came with the new COIN strategy overburdened them. "How were they supposed to protect the population?" asks his mother Emma.

Bingo. Oh, this is yet another reason to note that the British counterinsurgency in Malaysia was far different than what Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed.

So, instead of blaming a "hate machine," let's blame politicians from President Obama on down who still want to believe, and want to have the American public believe, a ground war can be fought on the cheap. Let's blame generals like Petraeus who refuse to counteract many Americans' video game version of war and won't tell the politicians the truth, as Spiegel notes in discussing the Pentagon's fear of war atrocities photos coming to light. And, let's blame Americans who want to believe all this and who, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, aren't being asked to "feel" the cost of war.

Here's the reality, as Spiegel describes it:

Adam Winfield rarely saw the enemy. He and his comrades only saw the Talibans' helpers through their night-vision devices when the enemy was burying landmines -- they hid during the day. For days, the Americans did nothing but carry out senseless patrols. The soldiers became frustrated and bored.

The enemy, says Adam's father, is invisible until somebody gets blown up. "They are fighting against ghosts."

Of course they're going to be skittish, and not do well on counterinsurgency work.

That said, again, let's remember these facts:
1. Americans want to hear lies about the painless, techie nature of modern war.
2. Politicians don't want to upset citizens, nor appear "weak on war"; in Bush's case, it includes continuing to tell lies about what his administration achieved in Afghanistan.
3. The military brass will "sell" whatever it can, while doing another thing in reality, for a number of reasons.

So, you're going to get a clusterfuck.

That's why good liberals who write blank checks of support for the Army aren't such good liberals. That's especially true when a "professional" army, versus draftees, is more likely to produce incidents such as these, in my opinion.

As for Adam Winfield? Does his finally giving into pressure to join the kill team make him murderer or victim of psychological bullying? Or a bit of both?

While glad I've never been in a situation such as his and presuming I never will be, we can't consider him 100 percent innocent. I'm not going to lay down exact percentages, but, we can't totally excuse him.

U.S. on hook for getting punked by fake Taliban

Only thing is, los Yanquis are trying to pass the buck.

Apparently, peace talks with the alleged Taliban leader exposed as an imposter last week were approved by then-U.S. commander Stanley McChrystal.

And, per the Guardian, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's attempts to blame the British for this is U.S.-originated spin.

McChrystal asked MI6 to develop the contacts, rather than going to the CIA, which was not empowered by the necessary White House directive to enter into direct talks with Taliban officials. The absence of such a "presidential finding" is seen by many diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic as an obstacle to progress towards a political settlement.

Shock me. Shock me more if Dugout Dave Petraeus isn't behind the spin of blaming the British. The fact that Stan the Former Man used MI6 rather than CIA is the technicality wedge for Dugout Dave or whomever to claim this was a British operation.

Meanwhile, here's why we shouldn't be surprised we got punked:

British intelligence is conducting an inquiry into the episode, in part to uncover the motive. One theory is that it was an exercise in kite-flying by the Taliban, to discover what Kabul and the British were offering, without risking a senior figure in the movement. Taliban leaders have been wary about attending meetings with would-be mediators, fearing they are on a Nato hit-list, known as the Joint Priority Effects List. A Nato source said: "If you look at it from their point of view, as soon as they turn up for a meeting, they give us an eight-digit map reference of where they are. This, on the other hand, is no risk."

Of course, Stan the Former Man and Dugout Dave were also too dumb to think the Taliban might actually be worried about a set-up.

Looking for generals in all the wrong places

Looks like Obama listened to the wrong generals on Afghanistan. Or, did he deliberately refuse to listen to the "right" ones because his mind was already made up?

Bob Woodward's book consistently shows three officers - retired Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, retired Gen. James L. Jones and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute - all cautioned him about the "surge" advocated by Gen. David Petraeus. None more strongly than Lute, a holdover from the Bush Administration.

That, in turn led to spats with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Actually, it looks like he didn't listen to anybody, too much, other than accepting Petraeus' 30,000 minimum as his own and apparently committing in advance to a 40,000 maximum.

Despite the critiques from Lute, Jones and Eikenberry, the only options that were seriously considered in the White House involved 30,000 to 40,000 more troops. ...

In early November 2009, Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, drafted a cable that was sharply critical of the military's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, saying it was likely to both "increase Afghan dependency" on the United States and force the U.S. government to incur "vastly increased costs." ...

The three generals' efforts, however, seem to have had only a modest influence on the final war strategy - in part because top Pentagon officials such as Mullen, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates presented a united front in opposition to deploying any fewer than 30,000 additional troops.

So, if this is all true, why did Obama treat us to his drawn-out Hamlet-like handwringing?

You know the answer.

It was to try to convince more liberal parts of his base that he was, actually, handwringing. Nice try, but a fail.

Your one-stop Pentagon! A scary as hell thought

Who needs a State Dept or a Directorate of National Intelligence, anyway, when the Pentagon is taking over more and more of those functions?

It's a great article with many angles. Tom Englehardt notes that leaking is OK, if you're a general trying to do an end run around civilians, including the Preznit, who will only intercede when the loss of face is overwhelming.

Tom also notes that Sec Def Gates, along with generals such as Petraeus and Odierno, will sometimes go straight to the teevee to try to work around the civilians, as in trying to keep troops in Iraq or Afghanistan past Obama's stated deadline. And I love that he labels Petraeus as the Teflon general.

No wonder Gates wants to continue deficit-inflating budgets, no matter his reputation as a trimmer.

That said, Bush started this by not having Rummy ride tighter herd on the generals, but, by making Afghanistan his own war, and other things, Obama has been not just an enabler, but an abetter of the brass hats expanding their powers at the expense of civilians, at least at the expense of the civilian at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Afghanistan withdrawal getting put on hold?

It looks like it could be. But, I'm just a (nonprofessional) leftist fringe member. I'm not the experienced Barack Obama or David Petraeus.

Petraeus jumps in bed with Max Boot

Yes, America's Political General sucks up to one of the top academic neocons to the point of denying his own Congressional testimony a couple months back that the US was too much in bed with Israel.

Sidebar: Is he thinking of running for President?

A-stan bottomless hole gets deeper

Gen. David Petraeus wants another 10,000 troops moved to Afghanistan.

And, how many more troops will you want after that, Gen. Westmoreland? And more KBR-types for the additional quartermaster functions?

Obama gets first foreign policy test on Pakistan

U.S. warned to drop unilateralism, but will he?

From President Asif Ali Zardari through Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar on down, Pakistan’s government is delivering an unambiguous message to Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of Central Command:

Stop the air strikes.

And, if Afghanistan, often known as the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, couldn’t lead us to our own Vietnam 2.0 in the area, listen to Zardari’s language:

“Continuing drone attacks on our territory, which result in loss of precious lives and property, are counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government. It is creating a credibility gap.”

Credibility gap, eh? Did we just roll the clock back 40 years?

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military is giving Petraeus “a glimpse of the Tora Bora from the other side,” in an attempt to show him just what it faces.

And, while the warning is putatively for Petraeus, given that Barack Obama has announced his support for unilateral incursions of all kinds, not just air strikes, into Pakistan, we know who is the ultimate target of this message.

Per the WaPost, here’s further warning that Obama’s foreign policy honeymoon could be short in this area if he gets too hawkish:

The Pakistani Defense Ministry said in a statement released shortly after the meeting that frequent attacks inside Pakistan by U.S. Predator drones “could generate anti-American sentiments” and “create outrage and uproar” among Pakistanis.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is trying a “North West Frontier Awakening,” its twist on the “Anbar Awakening” Petraeus oversaw in Iraq.

A short-term success, the jury is still out on the Anbar Awakening, with it likely to lead to some sort of Iraqi civil war in the long term.

From Pakistan, Petraeus has said he will, essentially, take the complaints under advisement.

Time for some Dems and bloggers to eat some Petraeus crow

Less than six months ago, some national Dems and many major Dem-backing MSLBs were calling Gen. David Petraeus an incredibly political general who was in Bush’s hip pocket. Today, many of the same blogs are favorably flagging Petraeus’ expressed desire to open contacts with Syria — but ignoring their own past history on this issue.

(Also, the politicization of Wesley Clark never seems to come up.)

Is that crow I smell on the grill?

Kevin Drum punks himself

By swallowing whole hog the spinmeistering by Peter Mansoor, Gen. David Petraeus’ former executive officer that, while other things beyond “the surge” may narrowly have contributed to “more success” in Iraq in 2007-08, it really was the surge.

Here’s Kevin, all sweetness and light:

Pro-war conservatives (have) … always had a much better argument to make (about the surge), one that Mansoor comes close to making here. …

The security situation in Iraq was on the cusp of something potentially dramatic, and it was possible that a small nudge might make an outsized difference. The surge was that nudge. …

It sure seems like both the most plausible and the most persuasive argument in favor of the surge — one that I'm not at all sure I'd reject out of hand.

The surge was a “nudge”? First, the various surge backers would n never describe as just a nudge.

Second, Mansoor himself rejects Drum’s idea while also pulling the McCain trick of redefining the surge:

To realize how misleading these assertions are, one must understand that the “surge” was more than an infusion of reinforcements into Iraq.

Finally, Mansoor's column ignores the ephemeral nature of any surge “success.”

And THAT’s what the neocons and just plain cons don't want to discuss.

In the middle of August doldrums, we have a clear winner for Kevin Drum’s worst post of the week, already on a Monday!

U.S. backtracks on Iraq timelines opposition

In exchange for agreeing to timelines (which are not that set in stone anyway), BushCo gets a trade-off from Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

His agreement to a more temporary arrangement than a full-blown status of forces agreement. He likes this because it doesn’t require a two-thirds vote of the Iraq Parliament. BushCo has to like it because it’s the best it’s going to get.

The agreement would last through the end of 2009.

Oh, and on a related topic? Barack Obama, if you’re elected president, and Gen. Petraeus, as head of CentCom, resists your suggested speed of drawdown?

You ARE the Commander in Chief. You CAN reassign him.

So much for the Anbar Awakening

All that has awakened, among Sunni Muslims in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq, in the longer term is a new round of intra-Sunni violence, which will surely only intensify now that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “assault” against Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army in Basra has flopped, plus subsequent Iraqi Army desertions as U.S. forces tried to cordon off Shi’a areas of Baghdad.

A vicious civil war is now being fought within Iraq’s Sunni Arab community between al-Qa’ida in Iraq and al-Sahwa (the Awakening Council) while other groups continue to attack American forces. In Baghdad on a single day the head of al-Sahwa in the southern district of Dora was killed in his car by gunmen and seven others died by bombs and bullets in al-Adhamiya district.

U.S. spokesmen speak of a “spike” in violence in recent weeks but in reality security in Sunni and Shia parts of Iraq has been deteriorating since January. The official daily death toll of civilians reached a low of 20 killed a day in that month and has since more than doubled to 41 a day in March. The US and the Iraqi government are now facing a war on two fronts.

Not “spike,” but “surge” in violence, Mr. Gen. David Petraeus. This is something we cannot “win.” Be honest. Your puppetmaster/idol is leaving office in nine months from tomorrow anyway.

Dick Cavett on Petraeus and Crocker

It’s too bad Dick Cavett still doesn’t have a talk show of his own, with this takedown of the speaking style and more of Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. But, his regular blog on the Times website is a good substitute.

It’s hard to imagine where you could find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers. …

As speakers, both Petraeus and Crocker are guilty of unbearable sesquipedalianism. …

If Crocker’s collection of these broken shards of verbal crockery were eliminated from his testimony, everyone there would get home at least an hour earlier.

Petraeus commits a different assault on the listener. And on the language. In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to “Eyewitness News.”

Read on for much more hilarity.

Petraeus hearings – McCain becomes New Ager while Cornyn and Graham are wingnut suckups

Schmuck Talk Express™ says “We should choose to succeed.”

Just like that, eh? “Believe it and it will happen,” like some New Age mantra?

OK, Schmuck Talk, do you choose to follow Gen. Shinseki and put 500,000 troops in Iraq, although it’s too late for even that to succeed? Tell us what you’re going to do to actually create “success,” you deceitful warmonger.

Meanwhile, whether it’s a sign of old age in general, Alzheimer’s in particular, or what, McCain still can’t keep his Shia’s and Sunnis straight, calling al-Qaeda a Shi’a group.

Meanwhile, Texas quite-junior junior senator, John Cornyn, wants to almost literally run Petraeus up the flagpole and salute him with this petition:

Please know that we in Texas support you and all of the men and women serving our country with honor. We have entrusted you with a mission and respect the dignity you bring to our country and the job of leading our military in such a dangerous region of the world.

My response?

I pledge allegiance to the stupidity, wingnuttery and head-up-bunghole denialism of the junior senator from Texas, for the me for whom he does not stand, etc. etc.

Signed: Monty Python, at theholygrail@gmail.com.

Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, thinks Petraeus deserves a fifth star. For what? Being a politician?

And, where would we be without the neocomic relief of Joe Lieberman, claiming Iraq has had more political reconciliation than the U.S.

I guess he thinks that in Maliki’s Iraq, “reconciliation” flows from the barrel of a Mao-like gun.

Why does Petraeus hate Bush’s legacy troops in the field?

Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate today he is against more U.S. troop drawdowns in Iraq:

Petraeus told a Senate hearing that he recommends a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" once the extra combat forces that President Bush ordered to Iraq last year have completed their pullout in July. He did not commit to a timetable for resuming troop reductions after the 45-day pause. …

Petraeus said his approach takes account of the fact that security gains achieved over the past year are fragile and reversible, and he said it is intended to “form a foundation for the gradual establishment of sustainable security in Iraq.” But he did not say when he thought that goal would be reached.

“Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year,” Petraeus said.

What this means, claims of Bush and Defense Secretary Bob Gates aside, is that U.S. troops will stay on a 15-12 rotation rather than a 12-12 one.

I’ll bet five bucks that nobody calls him out on that in the hearing, though.

The “Petraeus report”: my take

First, it isn’t a report on conditions in Iraq nearly as much as it is PR flak. Independent studies have shown that violence in Iraq in general is up — well up if you adjust for the summertime slack-off in 120-degree heat.

The Government Accounting Office has said this. But, not just the GAO.
Our own, Bush-sized embassy in Baghdad has said this. So has the Congressional Research Service. And, so has an independent private-world think tank

From the Congressional Research Service study, as reported by the New York Daily News:

“My assessment is that because of the number and breadth of parties boycotting the (Iraqi) cabinet, the Iraqi government is in essential collapse,” said Kenneth Katzman, the author of the report. “That argues against any real prospects for political reconciliation.”

Without that political infrastructure, Katzman said any military progress would be short-lived.

That is, if there actually is any military progress, which Katzman doubts.

“I would even question the military progress,” he said.

Because of the political instability, and the lack of military success, Katzman said he agreed with many senior State Department officials in Iraq that a political solution to the war is now “hopeless.”

And, Stephen Biddle, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of Petraeus’ advisory panel, said (expressing his personal view) that the strategy in Iraq would require the presence of roughly 100,000 American troops for 20 years — and event then would be a “long-shot gamble.”

Twenty years? Talking about Vietnam comparisons, that’s twice as long!

But, President Bush is apparently determined to have a successful report, whether it’s reality-based or PR-based. And Gen. Petraeus, from what I’ve read, has been willing to salute whatever his commander-in-chief ran up the flagpole from the time Petraeus was named ground commander in Iraq.

Especially as Petraeus isn’t even putting anything in writing himself for Congress, we should more accurately call it the Bush report anyway.

And, contrary to a popular straw man, red herring, or whatever, no, the terrorists are not going to follow us home if we leave Iraq. Nor is al-Qaeda going to then topple Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Many people have compared this war to Vietnam. One of the closest comparisons is these two statements closely track the “domino theory” about South Vietnam, how if it fell to the North, Laos, then Cambodia, then Thailand, then all of southeast Asia would go Communist. Eventually, the theory went, we could be fighting them in America, a statement no doubt used to justify CIA domestic spying and a host of other evils.

Well, Vietnam was as much, if not more, a nationalist war than a Communist plot. And, nobody “followed us here.” So, too, is Iraq a nationalist revolt more than a religious one. Plus, given the almost mythical al Qaeda in Iraq accounts for less than 10 percent of violence there — probably less than 5 percent — nobody there is in a position to “follow us here.” Besides, with the degree of factionalism there, that country is likely to enter something like the Thirty Years War when we leave.

So, let’s leave, already. The notion that we can actually change anything — change for the long term, certainly — in Iraq would be laughable if not already tragic. As for the claim the “surge” has rediced Iraqi civilian casualties, the independent studies paint a different story. And, since the Pentagon won’t even declassify how it determines causes of different casualties, its methodology has to be considered suspect because it lacks transparency. (To put it bluntly, from where I sit, the Pentagon is cooking the books, and for political reasons. Does anybody remember the inflated body counts of Vietnam, and for similar reasons?)

Beyond all of the above, there’s too great a danger that too much of the general populace will take the Bush-ghostwritten Petraeus report at face value. That, in turn, could lead to knee-weakening of too many Democratic Members of Congress.

Petraeus: September is no policy deadline date — he has no deadlines at all

Gen. David Petraeus says September is a report deadline and nothing more, one of several insights in a British interview.

“That is a deadline for a report not a deadline for a change in policy, at least not that I am aware of. Ambassador Crocker and I intend to go back and provide a snapshot at that time, however focused the photograph is at that time and begin to describe what has been achieved and what has not been achieved and also to provide some sense of implications of courses of action. Neither of us is under any illusion.”

Really? Wonder if Dems will smell more coffee on the next Iraq supplemental?

And, he doesn’t expect “total victory”:

Will [the surge] be enough to restore security?

“You are never going to eliminate sensational attacks in Baghdad. That cannot be your metric of success. What we have to do is reduce their number and their impact. We had done quite well until the attack yesterday that killed a number of innocent civilians.”

And, apropos of the headline, he’s very open-ended about deadlines:

Would you like the surge to continue indefinitely?

“It depends on what the sense is for the prospects of achieving Iraq’s constitution. I hope that we can put time back on the Washington clock. Al-Qaeda is keenly aware of the Washington clock. They are obviously going to have a surge of their own.

And, he continues to “pump up the volume” about the importance of Iraq:

What about the leadership in Iraq?

"It is still led by foreigners called al-Qaeda Senior Leadership (AQSL). Our assessment is that this is the central front for al-Qaeda. They have a global war of terror, and Iraq is the central front. Whether you like it or not.

So, in a nutshell, the top brass in Iraq wants an open-ended commitment and claims we have to fight al-Qaeda there. He goes on to claim Iran has a high degree of backing for rogue elements of the Mahdi Army (I wouldn’t doubt some backing, but question the degree) and that the still-unpassed draft oil law is a key to political reconciliation.

Well, general, if you believe that, you could be waiting a long time.