About that Petraeus “Report” that he assured all he would be writing himself after it leaked out that the report would be coming from the White House?
Yeah, scratch the indignant “I'll be writing my own report” bullshit – and by the way, I will remind you here and now that anyone familiar with the mans body of work knew he was blowing smoke.
Today we learned that the only hard-copy Petraeus will be working from will be his opening statement. He will bring a stack of PowerPoint graphs and charts – the sort of thing that sucked in the lame-brained Brian Baird – but Petraeus won’t be writing, nor will he be presenting, a “Petraeus Report” because no such animal exists.
Yes, I realize full well that the text of PL 110-28 says:
“the President, having consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, the United States Ambassador to
“[T]he United States Ambassador to
…so save the slavering wingnuttery. Especially since you probably didn't know yourself until some right-tard fatassed-fascist chickenhawk war-blogger with no skin in the game gave you the petticoat to crawl under within the last 72 hours. For the record, I read the text of the law in May, have known what it said for months and I've been waiting for the wingnuts to crawl out of the woodwork. I have my can of Raid at the ready for the vermin.
In other words, I am in no mood to tolerate having my leg pissed on and being told it’s raining.
Now, riddle me this, Batman (nice cowl, by the way) : What do you think got through to more people: The actual text of the law? Or the lawmakers talking on the TeeVee? (I’m going with the TeeVee, because there is no possibility of a boob-shot if you are reading the text of the legislation that rules our lives, and Galileo knows that Americans will always go for boobs over substance.) I am guessing that MAYBE .5% of Americans who consider themselves well informed read the text.
(h/t John Amato @ Crooks & Liars for the rundown)
Senate Minority Leader McConnell:
Let me remind the Senate of what we agreed to…We voted, and put into law, that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker would report in September on progress. The benchmarks report and the timeline we set in May was clear. It gave us, the troops, and our allies, clarity on what was expected.
The war will be discussed in September again—we all know that—when General Petraeus is ready to report to the Senate…General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will come to Washington in September to report on the status of their efforts and those of the Iraqis.
To press the point further, I strongly believe that whatever the inclinations of Senators on the conduct of the war in
Fifty-four days ago we sent a message to General Petraeus: Go forth with the surge, and then come back and report to us.
I have never been more convinced that waiting for General Petraeus’s report in September was more right than yesterday afternoon…
That’s why when we confirmed General Petraeus unanimously in the Senate, we said to him very clearly, you go to
But the fact is, Gen. David Petraeus…will come back and report to us in September.
The Democrats agreed on that funding, but they requested that we have a report from General Petraeus in the middle of September to find out what progress we were making. We all agreed to that.
I promised in person, in my office, to General Petraeus, that I would wait to hear his report this fall.
And of course I couldn’t leave out everyone’s favorite Republican:
In fact, this amendment should not even be considered now…Because in that bill we required General Petraeus, along with our Ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, to come back in September and report to us…I made a personal pledge to him. I am going to give him and the troops a fair chance, which this amendment would deprive him of, and I am going to give him until September to come back and tell me how it is going.
[All emphasis mine]
First, Resident Evil™ and his minions in the Senate systematically set out on a disinformation campaign designed to pin all hopes on a “Petraeus Report” that every last mother-fucking one of them knew was actually going to be written by the White House. (This is called lying. It ought to be called Treason when it involves a war and the lives of other peoples children.)
When the citizenry began to grumble about being lied to, wingnut congresscritter from Virginia ,Tom Davis tried to tamp down the controversy by explaining that the report would be Petraeus’ but the White House would probably “tweak” it, but, he insisted, it would be Petraeus’ report.
(Another lie from a wingnut Republican. Surprise, surprise, surprise! They always fall back to their default position, don’t they?)
There will be no written report from the Surgin’ General. His statements to Congress will be made public, but there will be no public record of what information he provides to aWol. This obscuring process doesn’t go very far toward discrediting the reports we got this week that pull the masks off the bandits, does it?
I am left with one conclusion: Petraeus did such a good job of producing Kabuki this summer, they are extending the run into the fall!
(H/T to the bloggers at Think Progress. Their archives were relied on heavily for this post.)
