BUSH FINALLY FOUND A GENERAL WHO WILL READ ROVE'S TALKING POINTS-- DAVID PETRAEUS, A DISGRACE TO HIS UNIFORM

Petraeus strategizing with right-wing imbecile Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

George Bush has had a problem with his generals. Too many are were nonpartisan professionals who are were focussed on military problems, not on electing Republicans to office. When Bush has felt generals were not team players-- the kind of players the Roves and the Doans and the Gonzaleses and the Goodlings consider part of "the team"-- he just gets rid of them and stifles dissent to the harebrained and disastrous policies based on his narrow partisan agenda can look like they're wrapped in the red, white and blue associated with the military. Many of us were astounded when the Bush Regime abruptly fired Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress just weeks before the 2003 invasion that several hundred thousand US troops would be necessary to secure Iraq after the invasion. That wasn't the answer the Regime wanted and that was the end of Shinseki's honorable career serving our country in ways slimy partisan hacks like Cheney and Bush never thought about. By humiliating General Shinseki they shot a warning salvo towards other military professionals. It worked to a great extent, but not completely and many officers have continued to warn us of the gross incompetence, if not criminal malevolence of the Bush Regime. Yesterday when Harry Reid called attention to the craven nature of the politcial nincompoops Bush has installed, it was time for the Regime and their far right media shills to slander him (again).

Eventually Bush has managed to Bush out all the honest men and has now peopled the military with Republican yes-men and utter hacks, particularly David Patraeus who the far right is already touting as a potential GOP electoral candidate for something or other.

So while everyone except partisan GOP propagandists is reporting that there has been an increase in deadly violence since Bush's and Patraeus' ill-conceived escalation (or "surge"), the political general calmly declares that the surge is working, causing a sane person to wonder who, exactly, Patraeus is working for.

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

The report-- the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq-- coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq's government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.

...Iraqi leaders have made "little progress" on the overarching political goals that the stepped-up security operations are intended to help advance, the report said, calling reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions "a serious unfulfilled objective." Indeed, "some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq," it said, noting that 36 percent of Iraqis believe "the Iraqi people would be better off if the country were divided into three or more separate countries."

The 46-page report, mandated quarterly by Congress, tempers the early optimism about the new strategy voiced by senior U.S. officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, for instance, in March described progress in Iraq as "so far, so good." Instead, it depicts limited gains and setbacks and states that it is too soon to judge whether the new approach is working.

To counter the report, Bush trotted out his increasingly pathetic hack Petraeus to read the Republican Party talking points. He says he sees "signs of normalcy... I'm talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks-- big ones, markets that are very vibrant." If Patraeus thinks big amusement parks are going to make up for the destruction of the very fiber of Iraqi life, he's as clueless as Bush, Cheney and the Republican leadership in Congress.


UPDATE: I SEE THE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER AND I ARE ON THE SAME PAGE REGARDING PETRAEUS

Everyone is always afraid to criticize the military. But by showing himself as nothing but a handmaiden for the overly-politicized-- some would say criminally-politicized-- Bush Regime, Petraeus has forfeited the respect people usually offer career military professionals. This morning's Washington Post reports that Reid looked at the same USAToday article I quote above and had the same reaction I did. He's more diplomatic than I am though.

Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charged that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command in Iraq four months ago, "isn't in touch with what's going on in Baghdad." He also indicated that he thinks Petraeus has not been sufficiently open in his testimony to Congress. Noting that Petraeus, who is now on his third tour of duty in Iraq, oversaw the training of Iraqi troops during his second stint there, Reid said: "He told us it was going great; as we've looked back, it didn't go so well."

Reid seemed most provoked by an article in yesterday's edition of USAToday, which quoted the general as saying that he sees "astonishing signs of normalcy" in the Iraqi capital. "I'm talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks -- big ones, markets that are very vibrant," Petraeus told the newspaper.

The general's comments came on the same day that the Pentagon released to Congress a quarterly report on security in Iraq. It said that the three-month-old U.S. counteroffensive in Baghdad has not curtailed overall violence in the country but has instead shifted it from inside the Iraqi capital to places around it.

"I was a little disappointed, to say the least, today reading the USAToday newspaper, where he's saying things are going fine," Reid told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

Petraeus is a partisan hack who has thrown his lot in with the Bush Regime and eshrewed his duties to the people of the United States. The sooner he's relegated to the scrapheap of history, the better. My prediction: look for him to pop up as a GOP candidate for senate from some backward state in the not too distant future.