Song of the Day

Professor K

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

To some people, the "surge" is a wild success. For those of us that have a memory that stretches back more than 6 months, we recognize that the "troops can stand down when the Iraqis stand up" for many years now. The rhetoric is exactly the same, year after year after year.

I just saw a report on CNN that has an advance copy of the "Patraeus" report to Congress this next week. Apparently he will say that the surge is making progress, but not as fast as they had hoped and will reccomend keeping the same troop levels.

And The Song Remains the Same