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From Where Does Petraeus' Confidence Spring?
Echoing Amb. Crocker's "bottom-up" picture, Gen. Petraeus told presidential hopeful Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) that what gives him reason to believe reconciliation is on the way is that reconciliation efforts on the ground are outpacing the "big law" in Baghdad. There may be no amnesty law for ex-insurgents, for instance, but amnesty is the right word for "former insurgents in Abu Ghraib next to a Sunni-Shiite fault line being allowed to attend a police academy."
And yet in 2006, Prime Minister Maliki established a reconciliation program that didn't go anywhere. There were a number of reconciliation conferences in 2005 as well. If Petraeus and Crocker are ready to say that centrally-directed efforts at reconciliation are irrelevant, they should say it outright, so the administration, Congress and the Iraqis can debate the point. But to suggest that local steps will lead to the end of the intractability is a tall order, belied by the last two years of history.
Comments (3)
Paul wrote on September 11, 2007 1:45 PM:The frame here seems to be "trust us". They're carefully avoiding any statement that could be independently verified or disproved, and taking actions (read: classification) to ensure that it stays that way.
Casualties are down--take our word for it, since it was good enough for 11% of the intelligence community. Reconciliation has begun--I saw it, I swear. We're drowning in untrustworthy anecdata.
Sharon wrote on September 11, 2007 2:19 PM:General Petraeus' observations -- cherry-picked. What facts is he omitting from his report? As we've learned time and again since 2001, the Bush Administration most often sins by omission than by commission.
I think there's a million ways or more to interpret events in Iraq. Bush gets to make up the test and grade it himself. And then he classifies the results.
Bush is a lying cheating flim-flam man. It is disheartening to watch our Congress stand by and let this fraud go on another day.
Frederick wrote on September 11, 2007 4:52 PM:I don't believe for one second, Petraeus wasn't talked to
by Cheney about his rosy testimony. He said he wasn't
influenced by the administration, but he clearly is all
military and does what he's told. He didn't look comfortable when he had to lie.