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About General Petraeus
Re How dare you criticize General Petraeus I assure you, we're not "mocking" Gen Petraeus. We're simply and unambig-
uously accusing him of betraying his nation. He should be fired and face trial.
Petraeus is a traitor because I (armed with my Internet connexion and my friends' dodgy opinions) know more about the situation that he (armed with millions of dollars of intelligence apparatus) does.
Yeah, I'll buy that. Not.
Gen. Petraeus may be lying, but I don't think he is. I think he's right: Iran is financing a good amount of the strife in Iraq because it makes the US look bad; things are turning around in Iraq, albeit slowly; we may be able to leave in a year or two.
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To clarify, I'm certainly not suggesting that we know more about the situation in Iraq than General Petraeus does. He's far more knowledgeable than I, and also far more dishonest.
Petraeus's job is to give the media the Bush-Cheney spin, which has been a non-stop litany of lies on Iraq, and on virtually every other issue.
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Do you have any evidence for this statement? I'm not denying that it's possible -- I don't know the man, nor do I know anyone who does. I do, however, believe that in general our Army officers are honorable men who do not make a habit of lying.
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My comments are not about US military officers in general, only about one specific Army General, David H. Petraeus.
On 13 May 2003, while Petraeus was commander of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, he called a press conference and announced that experts had concluded with a "reasonable degree of certainty" that a trailer found by his men was a "mobile biological agent production lab". This was untrue, but it was widely reported and repeated for months, and to this day there remains a widespread misimpression among Americans that mobile WMD labs were discovered in Iraq. LINK
Three years later, the Washington Post reported that two weeks after Petraeus called his press conference, US intelligence experts concluded that "there was no connection to anything biological," and that the trailers were in effect "the biggest sand toilets in the world." LINK I have no direct evidence that Petraeus knew his announcement was false, but in personally making the announcement he put his name and reputation on the line.
In September 2004, Petraeus wrote a column for the Washington Post LINK describing "tangible progress" in the training of Iraqi nationals to handle their own nation's security. "Today," Petraeus wrote four years ago, "approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished." That doesn't sound much like reports I've read elsewhere, and of course, there's no military reason for General Petraeus to write such a glowing report for readers of the Washington Post. It was written to sway Americans' opinions, and it did. Swaying your opinion, then, is at least part of Petraeus's job.
The Government Accountability Office report on progress in Iraq was startlingly at odds with Petraeus's sunny report on Iraq. LINK
He is known to have "softened" bad news by rewriting it. LINK
Petraeus is a military commander, but he is also a key Bush-Cheney administration spokesman. He was promoted and named to command the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq in June 2004, a position he would not have been given without approval by the Bush-Cheney White House. Three years later President Bush personally announced Petraeus's next promotion, making him commanding general of all U.S. troops in Iraq. After Ashcroft, Gonzales, Mukasey, Brownie, Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, Henry Kissinger to investigate 9/11, Karl Rove to oversee New Orleans reconstruction, et al, most observers have concluded that Bush-Cheney appointments are based much more on ideology and mindset than merit.
So what's the mindset of David Petraeus? He is absolutely on board with the Bush-Cheney administration's ongoing demonization of Iran. He has said repeatedly that Iranian-backed groups are the greatest threat to Iraq, that Iranians are training Iraqi fighters, that many confiscated weapons in Iraq are Iranian-made. Is it the truth? A lot of reporters, pundits, and Americans are willing to give Petraeus and the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit of the doubt. I say, America would benefit from more doubt, lots more.
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