New ad which will appear in the Sunday edition of the New York Times


New York, NY (Rotters)- In a vote of 3,100,000 to 100,000 yesterday, the members of a massive nationwide progressive political action group voted overwhelmingly to place a second ad in the New York Times this weekend condemning the U.S. Congress for wasting time condemning a previous ad condemning General David Petraeus as "General Betray us". The ad implies that both houses of Congress, in particular the leadership, are "Ass-kissing little chickenshits", a term which has been used to refer to General Petraeus by his superiors in the past.

During General David Petraeus' reports to Congress, we learned that former Sunni insurgents have begun fighting on our side in Iraq. Sunday, I came across a London Times article that states:

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree, the Out of Iraq Blogger's Caucus and Wordlwide Sawdust.

Political schemes are afoot as congress anticipates the report to be delivered by David Petraeus this Monday. Our pitiful and pathetic democracy has been reduced to outsourcing its national security policy to a general with a history of erroneous assessments about progress in Iraq. This is what Petraues wrote in his opening paragraph for an op-ed in the Washington Post on September 26, 2004:

"Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task. Doing so in the middle of a tough insurgency increases the challenge enormously, making the mission akin to repairing an aircraft while in flight -- and while being shot at. Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up."

See You In September, With A Report We Wrote In July

In a story in the LA Times this morning "Top general may propose pullbacks" Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel report that Petraeus may announce pullbacks from some areas in Iraq, including al Anbar province and a turnover of those ares to Iraqi forces.

I'm somewhat mystified by this process as it appears that, at the White House, they seem to know already, in other words, today, what they are going to report in September, in other words, a month from today. In fact it seems that they began writing their "field report" weeks ago... in the White House.

I'm not sure why exactly, but this somehow reminds me of reports I hear from teachers with experience in the "no child left behind" follies, who have described to me the specter of spending weeks and weeks of classroom time devoted to "teaching to the test" in order to maintain mandated academic ratings and the flow of federal funds. Taking the test is mostly a charade, passing the test, a foregone conclusion, an exercise in making things look good on paper.

In other words, as Junior might say every few seconds, in the case of Iraq they are writing a "report" which will contain recommendations that will allow us to draw conclusions, that were decided on in the White House more than a month ago.