Right Voices

They haven’t seen the report but:

“We know what is going to be in it. It’s clear. I think the president’s trip over to Iraq makes it very obvious,” the Illinois Democrat said. “I expect the Bush report to say, ‘The surge is working. Let’s have more of the same.’ ”

The top Democrats ” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California ” also referred to the general’s briefing as the “Bush report.”

What is it that they do believe? Well, the GAO report, of course, and why is that? The Democratic Congress ensured that the report would deliver negative “grades” for the Iraqi government by asking the GAO to evaluate whether or not the benchmarks have been met now–just two months after the major combat operations of the surge began. For the report from the White House, Congress asked the administration to detail if the Iraqis are making “sufficient progress.” But Congress asked the GAO, by contrast, to report if the Iraqis had “completed” the benchmarks. This ridiculous standard was a Congressional trap that forced the GAO to waste time and taxpayer money to come out with a pre-ordained and meaningless judgment, since no one ever promised or expected that the Iraqis would have met the benchmarks by now. And the GAO report doesn’t really shed light on the key question: Are the Iraqis making progress?

More from the Washington times on who it is that is more credible than Petraeus:

analysis due today by Gen. James L. Jones, former U.S. commander in Europe, that is expected to say security gains have been “uneven” and Iraqi security forces are ill-prepared to stand alone, according to a CNN report.

“We will see what the Bush report will be at the end of next week,” Mrs. Pelosi said. “The facts are self-evident that the progress is not being made. They might want to find one or two places where there has been progress … but the plural of anecdote is not data.”

Please take the time to read: I Guess Uncle Chuck Didn’t Read This, Either. After reading Ed’s work, one needs to ask, did the US secure the areas, or did Iraqis. If it was Iraqis, it contradicts the Dems position that Iraqis have made no progress.

Last night, I posted about Chuck Schumer’s jaw-dropping assertion that the US military had nothing to do with the success in Anbar, Diyala, and western Iraq in throwing off al-Qaeda goons. I noted that Chuck apparently never bothered to read reports from independent journalists who have reported from the front during the surge. He also hasn’t bothered to read the foreign press, including war critic Martin Fletcher of the Times of London, who spelled out clearly what role the Americans played in destroying AQI’s grip on the region in a story from a week ago (h/t: commenter Bennett, and empahses mine):

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