Congressional Democrats need to muster up the backbone (and staff work) to press Petraeus and Crocker really hard on this issue.

...and then give them more time, more money, and a pony.

"You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I'm entitled to THE math." - 10/24/06

By my math, an increase from 5500 to 7400 is almost a 35% increase, not 25%.

Work is hard, Kevin. SOOO much easier to roll over. It isn't as though their lives are on the line.

Kevin Drum >"...Congressional Democrats need to muster up the backbone (and staff work) to press Petraeus and Crocker really hard on this issue..."

That is true but do you really expect that to happen ?

Mr. Dreamer it IS time to wake up and notice the lions in your house before you become lunch !

“You would label it cynicism-as if that proved it wrong.� - Robert A. Heinlein

Keny Lay taught the Texans some pretty heavy math.

Come on, Kevin, most of the dems love the funny math. It gives them the out to support the surge, and then give the convenient "I was misled!" defense.

The report that the Pentagon told the GAO today to modify the number of benchmarks passed using revised figures they provided was just the straw that killed this camel's back.

Reports of Petraues asking DNI to tone down NIE, and reports that White House is going to write Petraeus report just show that what is going to be presented in September is not truth, nor anywhere near the truth.

It will be all fiction made up by the White House. Just like they made up Collin Powell's presentation to the UN of evidence that Saddam has chem and bio weapons.

Only a fool will claim that they were misled!

Drum: Congressional Democrats need to muster up the backbone (and staff work) to press Petraeus and Crocker really hard on this issue.

Why? Nevermind the concept of doing what's "good for the country;" it has become glaringly obvious that neither party is interested in anything besides winning elections. The longer this drags out, the better for Democrats hoping to win in '08, and in the meantime, they get to avoid taking responsibility for anything. For the Democratic politicians, the best thing to do is pay lip service to oversight, limit responses to the war itself to verbal complaints, and wait for the electoral windfall. For the Republicans -- especially Bush -- the best thing is to drag this thing out hoping for a miracle, or else hoping the shit hits the fan after Bush leaves, and then they can try blaming the Democrats. The short term interests of the people who actually run things don't coincide with the interests of we, the people.

[trolling Deleted]

Wow, did you just actually delete a Toll comment?

Good for you.

Democrats are too terrified of being called "weak on terror" to point out how weak on terror George W. Bush is, the man who sat for seven minutes staring into space, after being told "America is under attack" and then went and hid in a cornfield in Nebraska.

God, we live in depressing times....

Jeez, only 12 comments, and at least half of them are as cynical as I am.

Why should the Dems muster any backbone? What's in it for them?

The Reps are having to run to the fringe, 'cuz their primary is a serious battle, but the Dems are already thinking about the general, so they're running to the center. That means the debate is gonna be all on the right side of the field.

Wake me up when it's 2009...

Discussing "accountability" for education results in New Orleans yesterday, President Bush reiterated one of his favorite sound bites, "It's what I call challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations." Alas, not when it comes to the President himself and certainly not when the subject is the progress in Iraq.

For the details on why the White House wants the GAO to grade Bush's Iraq surge on a curve, see:
"White House: Bush Deserves 'Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations' on Iraq."

Democrats are too terrified of being called "weak on terror" to point out how weak on terror George W. Bush is, the man who sat for seven minutes staring into space, after being told "America is under attack" and then went and hid in a cornfield in Nebraska.

Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on August 30, 2007 at 6:54 PM | PERMALINK

This was the case once, particularly up through 2004, and it was probably correct for them to be terrified of it. But it's not the case anymore, and they have to know that. They refuse to act because they don't want to. A combination of big money donors who support the occupation (and war against Iran when it comes time for that, which time is rapidly approaching), and political opportunism means the Dems aren't doing anything because they choose not to -- because they have decided the status quo is in their best interests. I do agree, though, with the sentiment about "depressing times." I sometimes try to imagine what the Roman frame of mind was like when they decided to ditch their republic and embrace Caesarianism. It becomes easier for me to imagine that every day.

... if the violence figures are genuinely solid, Petraeus and Crocker ought to be able to provide solid evidence for them.

—Kevin Drum

Of course they will.

Last year's numbers were jury-rigged to be too low. They'll be glad to fess up to the higher actual numbers for last year now. Then they'll just jury-rig the numbers since the "Surge" began and make them look lower.

How the fuck will dems "muster up the backbone to prevent that?

From your article:

"As the Iraq Study Group concluded, the Bush Administration has in the past underreported violence in Iraq in an attempt to show progress. "On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been 'significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq.' The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis.' A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count…"
The finding confirmed a Sept. 8 McClatchy Newspapers report that U.S. officials excluded scores of people killed in car bombings and mortar attacks from tabulations measuring the results of a drive to reduce violence in Baghdad. By excluding that data, U.S. officials were able to boast that deaths from sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital had declined by more than 52 percent between July and August, McClatchy newspapers reported." [McClatchy, 12/6/06 ]..."

"...There is a history of the Iraqi government underreporting death tolls. The disparity in official numbers and the ones posted in the market, and apparent differences between government figures and eyewitness accounts after other recent bombings, leaves many Iraqis feeling that the government is intentionally downplaying or trying to cover up the numbers of dead." [Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/2007..."

AND: General Petraeus has a track record of reporting overly positive news."

From me:
Sick, orwellian revisionist history is what this administration lives for.
Thank you for delineating the book-cook.
Americans aren't dummies. We've heard the news reports of the many tragic events in Iraq.
The Associated Press is on it--many people read the hometown newspaper--and know of the violence in Iraq. And the rest of us blog.
Senators and Representatives likely were questioned during the August recess--in our area, Senator Arlen Specter held various town meetings--the televised session I watched revealed numerous questions were about Iraq, about getting the US out------NOW.

As a point of fact, I was impressed by the sophistication of the 'average American's' questions directed to Specter.

I think everyone's being a little hard on the dems. Yes, they usually have no spine, but they are in a tough spot on this issue. Let's suppose the dems actually were to cut off funding. Would Bush then respond by ending or scaling back the war? Absolutely not. He would respond by sending the same number of troops to battle, but with less equipment. I doubt Bush would give up on the war unless our soldiers were reduced to fighting completely naked and armed with nothing but rocks. And I don't think the dems will want to put our soldiers in that position. But Bush doesn't even have to let it get that far. He can steal money from the federal pension fund to finance the war and there's not much Congress could do about it. Clinton did just that to stabilize the Mexican currency (although he returned the money when the crisis was over). We are dealing with a rogue president and we can't really do anything about it short of removing him from office. And I'm not even sure he would actually leave even if he were impeached. Bush is an excellent example of why voters (and the Supreme Court) should carefully consider the sanity of a candidate before they put him in office.

How many Democrats will roll over and support Bush and Cheney when then start bombing Iran? Most of them will. Nothing will change for the better with these two parties in power.

Let's suppose the dems actually were to cut off funding.

Is there any research about how many Americans outside the wingnutosphere actually believe that we lost Vietnam because the dems cut off funding? That doltschloss crap is scary when it's widely believed. Is that what the dems are scared of?

Doncha think the dems got an earful being home--the purpose of the summer recess
is to meet with constituents.
Hillary applauded when hearing Gonales resigned.
I say they come back energized, ready to do their investigatory hearings and anti-bulls###
measures with this mis-administration. Bush really looks depleted and aged.

But again, I remain the eternal optimist.

Have a good evening. I will watch football

"Is there any research about how many Americans outside the wingnutosphere actually believe that we lost Vietnam because the dems cut off funding? That doltschloss crap is scary when it's widely believed. Is that what the dems are scared of?"

No. The dems are afraid of media stories reporting that soldiers are dying because they were sent to battle with insufficient equipment. The dems know that the media will blame them for not providing that equipment. And they already know they will be blamed for losing the war no matter what happens.

Hey everyone...

Looky:

The Decider says we are winning.

So back off with this revisions rant...

The Decider is fucking brilliant.
The Decider is a Yale grad.
The Decider is tough and tempered and he's done his tour of duty.
The Decider is well-read and well-spoken.
The Decider raised himself up from humble origins by his bootstraps.
The Decider is the ultimate self-made man.
The Decider has experience.
The Decider is devoted to Presidentin'... so much so he never takes a day off.
The Decider can tell a Sunni from a Shit...

That's why Democrats kowtow to The Decider!

If the Decider says it is true...
Well god fuck Texas in the ass: It must be true!

The Decider is your Big Brother.
The Decider knows best...

Long live The Decider!
Viva The Decider!
Bless The Decider!

Democrats need to find their rage. This video from Henry Rollins gives you a clue on how to do that.

Here's some funny math. Prior to Crocker/Petraeus, the big ad campaign for attacking Iran gets into full swing. Even if the PR isn't quite good enough to sell the idea, it has the side benefit of making staying in Iraq seem reasonable.

"Embarrassing, embarrassing. No wonder we're going down the tubes." -- Sgt. Dave Karsnia, Minneapolis Police Dept. (June 11, 2007)

TThere were significant revisions to the way the Pentagon's reports measure sectarian violence between its March 2007 report and its June 2007 report. The original data for the five months before the surge began (September 2006 through January 2007) indicated approximately 5,500 sectarian killings. In the revised data in the June 2007 report, those numbers had been adjusted to roughly 7,400 killings

Note that same report also shows an increase in "average daily casualties" of Iraqi civilians climbing through May-07 (~100/day, see page 24). That's difficult explain given the purported decrease in "sectarian killings" during the period.

Given the report's own numbers, we are now to believe that Iraqi civilian deaths are increasing, but that increase is not due to sectarian violence? Aliens? Jealous spouses? The mob? AQI (even harder to explain given the recent pronouncements of success against them)?

Or maybe it's because there's a benchmark for "Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security", but there's no benchmark calling for reducing the total number of Iraqi civilian deaths.

p.s. Or because the number of "Sectarian murders are murders with distinct characteristics, and are a subset of total civilian casualties", subject to the interpretation of the MNC, wherease total Iraqi civilian casualties don't require interpretation--dead is dead. And if you want to show benchmark progress, you'd want to shift as many dead as possible out of the "sectarian violence" column.

That's how it works, huh? "ROTFLMLiberalAO's" ditty is considered legitimate comment, and other just get swept off the page.

"These discrepancies have the impact of making the sectarian violence appear significantly worse during the fall and winter of 2006..."

I'm appalled that you and your source have the audacity to suggest that respected members of this administration, including Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, would conspire or seek to mislead or deceive Congress and the American people.

If nothing else, this administration has told it like it is, giving the straight-up and un-spun, unvarnished facts on Iraq to the American people.
President Bush, Vice Pres. Cheney and their staffs and subordinates in both the executive branch and the military have demonstrated the highest levels of integrity. Good, bad or ugly, they've told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Iraq.

Now it's time for YOU to tell the truth. Admit it. The Bush administration has made some mistakes, certainly. But they've set a whole new standard for candor, reliability and integrity in government. Their word is their bond. All Americans should be proud. Future administrations will strive to measure up to this shining example.

I have to admit (as a lurker), while it's not at all the only reason I visit Kevin's blog, I think Al might be the biggest reason I read the comments.

I mean, c'mon: "If nothing else, this administration has told it like it is, giving the straight-up and un-spun, unvarnished facts on Iraq to the American people.", "Good, bad or ugly, they've told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Iraq.", "But they've set a whole new standard for candor, reliability and integrity in government. Their word is their bond."

I sometimes think I should (or wish I could) take him more seriously, but he is just too funny. Comedy gold.

Carry on.

Fake strawmen like "Al" are, of course, acceptable here. Not much else.

It's painfully obvious that this Al is a phony - if there ever was a "real Al". No one, outside of a mental hospital, would assert that the Bush Administration has set a "new standard for candor, integrity and reliability in government". Get real.

Even if the down figures are solid, what really matters is that Iraqis feel secure in their homes. Why are refugee numbers surging?

These numbers are just the modern equivalent of a body count. They miss the point, completely.

I think Al is either doing very good satire, or he is so deep in trollville that he cannot see the comic nature of his writings.

What BushCo is doing is very simple. Puff up the numbers from before to make the "surge" numbers look low by comparison and comfortably say under oath that they didn't manipulate the "surge" numbers.

monkeybone:
That's how it works, huh? "ROTFLMLiberalAO's" ditty is considered legitimate comment, and other just get swept off the page.

Because it IS a legit comment.
I captured the zeitgeist of our times perfectly.

How do I know this?

Because if it wasn't true, if Bush was the opposite of everything I posted, then he'd have been laughed off the stage by now...

As it is people studiously listen while Bush lectures them about Iraq, with great respect, as if they were listening to a college professor wax lyrically on his subject. He must be brilliant!

Ergo, all those things I wrote must be true.
And I've been dead wrong about him all these years.

Bush's "Emperor's English" shouldn't hurt my ears!
And... he sure has some pretty fine clothes on!