McCain, Cheney reject Petraeus analysis of Iraq
The debate over the U.S. policy towards Iraq (and the debate over the debate) has taken several twists and turns over the course of five long and painful years, but if there’s one thing I thought the entire Republican establishment agreed on, it’s this: don’t disagree with Gen. David Petraeus. His judgment is sacrosanct, his word is gold, and his assessments of conditions in Iraq are unimpeachable.
Why, then, are John McCain and Dick Cheney contradicting Petraeus publicly?
Just four days ago, Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Washington Post that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation,” or in the provision of basic public services.
As it turns out, “no one” doesn’t include John McCain, who feels there’s been plenty of progress…
“Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”
… nor does it include Dick Cheney, who apparently sees political progress Petraeus doesn’t.
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a “successful endeavor,” pointing to security and political progress on a visit ahead of the fifth anniversary of the war.
A new schism between Petraeus and Republican leaders? Well, probably not. It’s far more likely that McCain and Cheney have their political talking points to read, and don’t much care whether they contradict Petraeus’ comments or not.
As for what Iraqis think about conditions in their own country, a new poll was released this morning from ABC News, the BBC, ARD German TV, and the Japanese broadcaster NHK. Iraqis aren’t quite as despondent as they were, but it’s hard to characterize the results as significant progress.
Challenges remain broad and deep. Beyond their own lives, most Iraqis, 55 percent, still say things are going badly for the country, even if that’s down from a record 78 percent in August. Violence remains common, particularly in the cities; local car bombs or suicide attacks, just within the past six months, are reported by 45 percent in Baghdad, 51 percent in Kirkuk and 39 percent in Mosul.
Living conditions for many remain dire, with sizable majorities reporting a lack of electricity, fuel, clean water, medical care and sufficient jobs. Improvement in all these has been modest at best. Six in 10 say they can’t live where they choose without facing persecution, although this, too, is well down from its peak.
Sectarian differences remain vast. While more than six in 10 Shiites and seven in 10 Kurds say their own lives are going well, that drops to a third in the Sunni Arab minority. Eighty-three percent of Sunnis rate national conditions negatively. And while half of Shiites and six in 10 Kurds expect their children’s lives to be better than their own, a mere 12 percent of Sunnis share that most basic hope.
Ratings of the national government and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki remain weak — 43 and 40 percent positive, respectively — and sharply split by sectarian group. Just half think legislators are willing to compromise on key issues. The country divides on the state of Sunni-Shiite relations, and Arab-Kurdish relations are rated more negatively.
In a telling result, one question asked Iraqis whether this is a good time for the millions who have fled the country to return. Forty-five percent say yes, now is the time for those Iraqis to come back — but 54 percent say it’s not. (Not surprisingly, where security is rated positively, Iraqis are 20 points more likely to say it’s time to return.)
As for Iraqis’ views of Americans, the bad news is 42% of Iraqis call it “acceptable” to attack U.S. forces through violence. The good news is, that number is down from 57% last year.
Maybe someone can pass the numbers on to McCain and Cheney. It sounds like their perspectives aren’t quite in line with reality.
Because McCain and Cheney are over there living and working in it every day. I guess next they and their media hacks will be all “Petraeus hates America” and doing whatever they can to look like they are sure he was always against them and the mission even though were fawning over him just a few months ago.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
And Petraeus will be changing his story to match Cheney’s in three….two…one….
McCain and Cheney are visiting Iraq. While there, I supppose Iraq really does have terrorists.
You killjoys in the reality-based community keep pointing at these stupid little facts. Where’s your patriotism, boys and girls???
/snark
I think what the Pepubs are saying is there has been progress in terms of news reporting, as in the TV news isn’t reporting all the killing and fighting still going on in iraq anymore making the GOP look better in time for the elections
I’d love to hear exactly what they are telling McCain and Cheney and exactly what those two are asking. I got a feeling it’s a ballad worthy of that great reggae singer, Rasho-mon.
Why does Gen. Petraeus hate our troops?
While more than six in 10 Shiites and seven in 10 Kurds say their own lives are going well, that drops to a third in the Sunni Arab minority
And that’s the key number – 33% Sunnis are not happy with their lives – any uptick in “national” numbers to 55% is clearly IN SPITE OF American presence – and NOT BECAUSE OF.
The evidence is here:
72 percent strongly or somewhat oppose the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq.
61 percent believe the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is making the security situation worse.
As Curmudgeon has elected to suppor one side of the issue—in that Petraeus will undergo a wholesale conversion to McCainCheneyThink, it is only fitting that I choose the opposite side of the coin, and declare that sometime within the next 48 hours, a “fine, upstanding member of the WingNuttia elite” will refer to Petraeus as “General Betray-Us.”
The betting window is now open….
OMG, Petraeus doesn’t support the troops!!! Darn those liberal facts! Next Bernanke will tout Bush as the first 2 Recession President.
This is classic bait-and-switch. I think we need to remind people about how Bush/Cheney played the deficit numbers the same way. By comparing their horrible “progress” to something even more horrible, they get to stand there and claim that things are “getting better”.
Meanwhile, we’ve got nearly 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, and trillions* utterly wasted in the war Bush/Cheney/McCain said would be won easily, over quickly, and paid for with Iraq’s oil exports. And it just keeps going on and on and on. But hey, it’s getting better, right? Tell that to the guys who are being sent on their fourth rotation, and the families of the dead and wounded.
Hey Bush: It’ll start to get better as soon as you’re gone, asshole.
* http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17leonhardt.html
Actually, the number of wounded has been deliberately obscured by the Bush administration. There was a mini-symposium (broadcast on NPR) with Stiglitz (of the “3 Trillion-dollar war”) and his co-author, where she talked about this. The actual number is 70,000 wounded, more than double the “official” number. Her discussion is well worth listening to. It was on from noon to one PM today, March 17, CDT.
How almost amusing. If the whole situation wasn’t so tragic, I might be able to get a laugh out of it.
Is that a bus I see behind the general?
And I am very disappointed that we haven’t seen more of the Winter Soldier conference that just wrapped up in DC. The stories provided by these brave men and women should be shouted across the rooftops of America.
http://tpzoo.wordpress.com/2008/03/15/winter-soldier-2008-iraq-and-afghanistan/
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/waroniraq/79782/
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/news-51/1205604843245040.xml&storylist=newsmichigan
Is it any surprise McCain and Cheney do not agree with Petraeus? To agree with him would go against the president and his views.
But meanwhile, Ahmadinajad is greeted as a liberator, so whether Cheney et. al. are right or wrong depends on the meaning of the word “we”.
Just out of curiosity, has Bush or Cheney ever made a non-surprise visit?
It’s so mainstream now that no one questions th whole “surprise visit” thing. Not that I expect our ForThe State to actually do their jobs, journalism donchano, but one can continue to hope.
Then again, I suppose we only get the occasional surprise visit by the dark lord as well. I think he has an aversion to sunlight.
Ah, the liberators that we are.
/snark
Isn’t this how we got into this whole pig f**k anyways? Facts are so darn troublesome.
General Petraus clearly knows as little about this as General Shinseki did.
You must not have seen the correction for the record. This was sent in response to the inaccurate reporting of the Washington Post.
MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ
PRESS DESK
BAGHDAD, Iraq
http://www.mnf-iraq.com
Press Release 080314a
March 14, 2008
Transcript of General Petraeus Interview with the Washington Post on Government of Iraq Progress
Today’s Washington Post inaccurately characterized the discussions General Petraeus and their reporters had yesterday. During the one-hour interview General Petraeus never intimated or stated that Iraqi leaders have “failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences.”
The Washington Post has been asked to make a correction on this statement and we are awaiting their decision.
The following transcript is from an interview with the Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan, Joshua Partlow and Cameron Barr of Gen. Petraeus’ comments on the Government of Iraq’s economic and political progress.
GENERAL PETRAEUS: …The government does have to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of many in the Sunni Arab community, if not most. There’s no question. Actually, it has to achieve legitimacy in the eye of all Iraqis…… and that can only come by improving the level of services, again — some of which are going to take some time, but some of which they can do in a…
WP: But they have political power. Anbar wants political power.
GENERAL PETRAEUS: And they will get it. But again, that’s why they want provincial elections. That’s why the provincial powers law and the subsequent provincial election laws are so important. I mean that’s why Ambassador Crocker and I have repeatedly noted that, you know, it’s crucial that the Iraqis exploit the opportunity that we and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to provide them. And they did start down that road. They have made a start down that road. And, you know, the laws that were passed, some of them are steps toward the kind of progress that is needed to begin to cement the gains that have been achieved in the security arena.
WP: Do you think enough has been done? I mean last year, you know, you’ve even said it…
GENERAL PETRAEUS: Sure.
WP: …a lot of commanders have said it that the key goal of the surge…
GENERAL PETRAEUS: Sure.
WP: …is to foster political reconciliation.
GENERAL PETRAEUS: No. — Let me take that again—don’t say that……let me just answer that one.
WP: Yeah.
GENERAL PETRAEUS: No one…no one in the government or US…or even in the government of Iraq feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation, legislation to cement the gains, and so on. They are all keenly aware. And the same with respect to basic services. I mean I actually…today I was invited by the prime minister after we had our weekly meeting with him, the ambassador and I, he said, “Will you stay around and sit in on the meeting with the ministers of oil and electricity?” And so I said, “Okay. I guess so.” I mean after three and one-half years of monitoring daily exports, towers up or down, you know, 400KV, 132KV, 11KV, the different oil lines, the different generators, and everything else, it’s actually helpful. And in fact, I just got a commitment from, you know, an enormous, maybe the biggest, electrical production company in the world to renew its efforts here after some pretty frustrating years, frankly. So…
WP: So you’re going to have…The surge is going to be gone by July. Are you…do you think the government has lost an opportunity to…
GENERAL PETRAEUS: No. I think…no. I think the opportunity is very much still there.
WP: You’re going to have less…you’re going to have the surge troops gone. One of the key goals of the surge troops is not…won’t be achieved by July.
GENERAL PETRAEUS: Well, again, the security progress, again, we certainly will do all that we can. I mean we’re going to fight like the dickens to maintain the progress and where we can to try to build on it. I mean we are really just embarking on the effort in Mosul which is of enormous importance to al-Qaeda and the related groups. It’s just very, very significant because of geography, politics, money.
WP: Yeah.
– 30 –
Remember “Baghdad Bob?”. He was laughable daily in the outright lies he was telling the press. One almost got the feeling he actually believed what he was saying. Same with Cheney and McCain, Lieberman, et al. These guys are so used to lying, they can’t tell the difference between their fantasy world and reality. They would be as ludicrous as Bob, if the lives of our troops and the Iraqi people weren’t riding on their lies.
MNF-I Press Desk,
Sorry, but my interpretation of the “transcript” — and let me just say, for the record, that, if General Petraeus wishes not to be misunderstood, he should learn to speak clearly and to the point — is that General Petraeus agrees that insufficient progress has been made. Oh, he’s provided himself with enough weasel-room to claim that he didn’t come right out and say it — he didn’t actually say anything, right out — but the WaPo could certainly be forgiven if they took away that impression — as I did.
I’d be willing to bet a fair amount that, when he’s giving orders, he doesn’t beat around the bush like that.
How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principles shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.
If you set the bar low enough, you are sure to succeed in getting over it.
Inconvenient isn’t, I just got my latest Newsweek with a cover story touting:
“The Petraeus Genearation”
The “ass kissing little chickenshit” will fall in line pretty quickly behind the war criminal McCain and his V.P/Sec Def – Lindsay ‘three rugs for five bucks’ Graham and Judas Lieberman.
Just my two cents
EE