Petraeus Hearing

[jgmacg]

Anyone with chronic insomnia or a persistent sleep disorder may want to tune in right now to the opening remarks.

 

[Football_Bat]

We've got the lies and the videotape.

Hold the sex, please.

 

[I love puppies!]

It would be funny if he would open his remarks with:

"Hey, what's up? You guys wanted to talk to me about something?"

 

[jgmacg]

That his microphone doesn't work is an apt metaphor. For something.

 

[John]

If you want to know more about him, read Rick Atkinson's In the Company of Soldiers, about the first year or so of the war.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

I'll just wait for the honest version over on Fox, thanks.

 

[Armchair_QB]

They've been at it for what, 90 minutes, and Petraeus hasn't had a chance to speak.

Nice of the Dem who led off the proceedings to basically call him a liar too.

 

[jgmacg]

Charts! Graphs! Kinetics! Serious! Frustrating!

 

[I love puppies!]

So the violence has come down and security has improved. How has the Iraqi government taken advantage of those facts?

 

[PeteyPirate]

Yes, sectarian violence has gone down at the same time that the criteria for classifying violence as sectarian have changed. Remember that bomb that killed 400 or so people? Not sectarian, therefore it doesn't count.

Also, shot in the back of the head? Sectarian.
Shot in the forehead? Not.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

They've been at it for what, 90 minutes, and Petraeus hasn't had a chance to speak.

Nice of the Dem who led off the proceedings to basically call him a liar too.

How "basically"?
Which Democratic politician did that?
Please show your work.
And, yes, Patraeus has inherent credibility problems that pre-date this hearing.

 

[Armchair_QB]

Lantos.

He ended his opening screed with the words "I don't buy it."

Gee Tom, maybe you should listen to him first.

 

[jgmacg]

Overwatch!

 

[jgmacg]

Cyberspace!

Initiatives!

Geometry!

 

[I love puppies!]

He just threw out the "Iran is a major problem" line. Cheney smiles.

 

[I love puppies!]

He just said that it's impossible to predict what will happen in the future. For example, the happy news about Anbar.

But, now, he's saying if we leave, there will be "dangerous results." If it's impossible to know what will happen in the future, than how can you say that?

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

Pink protesters.

 

[andyouare?]

I didn't know Fenian was a woman. You look good in pink, though.

 

[jgmacg]

Heartening to see some challenge to the self-congratulatory absurdity and pompous bull****. So far they've been the only people in the room who didn't show up just to make themselves look better.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Lantos.

He ended his opening screed with the words "I don't buy it."

Gee Tom, maybe you should listen to him first.

Well, hell, since the general has demonstrated his fealty -- going back to his suspiciously well-timed 2004 pre-election Op-ed, in which he said we'd turned the corner THEN -- to the White House and its new spinmeister, Enron Ed Gillespie, who now has wired himself into the Pentagon news operation, and has already appeared on radio with partisan hack Hugh Hewitt, and will this afternoon give an hour to a television propaganda network, and since the general's numbers were massaged by the spin operation in question, and since there really isn't any "report" at all, and since this administration squandered every ounce of its credibility on this topic a year ago, and since the GAO report and a couple of others have demonstrated that the conclusions derived from those well-massaged numbers are dubious at best, I don't know where Lantos gets off, myself.