Petraeus is the real deal -- something I've felt was true of most of the military men who have had to face Congress and The Senate over the past few years.
What is disappointing is the questioning. Almost every, single Republican questioner has begun with the condemnation of MoveOn.org's full page ad in the NYT. I haven't seen the ad, but I hear it refers to the General as Gen. Betrayus, which is disgusting, and anyone who thought that was clever or cute needs to look in the fuckin' mirror.
That, my friends, is exactly what the Right get upset about, and in this case they're correct to feel that way.
The second thing that the Republican questioners do is to ask questions that are slanted toward their ideology -- "If we start drawing down troops, isn't that a failure? What will the consequences be when we fail? Isn't pulling out just the same as surrender?" It's the same shit from them.
From the Left are coming real questions regarding the unmet benchmarks, how long are we supposed to feed American blood into the Civil War we started, isn't this getting expensive -- practical questions for which both men seem to hem and haw a bit.
The long and the short of it is this: these gentlemen, almost five years since our invasion of Iraq, are telling us that we will draw our troops down to pre-surge levels in the spring of '08. That means that we will have the same amount of troops in Iraq that we had back in January, when the troop surge was suggested -- and foolishly approved by the "New" Congress. So that means that we're back to Square One, which means that by Spring '08 nothing will have changed, which means that the American Government pulled one over our eyes ... again.
And that's your fault because only half of you go out and vote, then you forget about politics until the next election season.
The problem with Iraq is the Iraqis. They do not want to be accountable for their own government. They're afraid, I understand that. They've been forced out of a state of being they have indulged for fifteen hundred years because a small group of White Men wanted two things: 1) the rights to their natural resources, and 2) to stuff their country full of our contractors -- both military and industrial.
I'd also be resentful.
I feel bad for these two men, but they've made a fine presentation of where things now stand.
And where that is, my friends, is at the very beginning of an occupation that is going to last well-into the next decade, at least.
So now it's back to you, "New" Congress.
This is what you were waiting for, and, in my perception, the status of things is far worse than you were expecting to hear.
So what're you gonna do now, huh? Are you going to challenge this? Are you going to act upon Nancy Reagan's oh-so-helpful advice to the addicted and "Just Say No?" Because it's time. If you roll over again, as I expect you will, then you will critically injure the faith that we who put you into office invested in you.
So pony up, Mrs. Pelosi, because George ain't going to issue you the same leeway you and your invertebrate colleagues have been giving him for the last year.
What needs to happen is this -- we need to pull out of Baghdad. We need to develop a reward system -- "You guys get this done, we'll give you this." Yes, like a dog, or a child. And we must force certain values upon them (like equality between the sexes) ... and stuff like that should go for the Entire Middle East. I'm not saying to abandon them, that would be patently immoral ... a word I don't like to use, but applicable in this case because we went into this thing on a moral high ground (which we had post 9/11 and then squandered when we decided to invade the wrong country). However, having the majority of our military playing Whack-A-Mole in this fucking Hornet's Nest, and then claiming that we're "kicking ass" is a convoluted deception, and it is going to be up to the "New" Congress to shut down this flim-flam before we get another HBO special with James Gandolfini talking to newly created amputee soldiers dragged off the streets of Iraq.
And if they won't do it, gang, then it's back in your hands.
I may have to suck it up and encourage a vote for third-parties in the next election, because I don't like where this is going so far.
