petraeus.jpgWatch as the MSM continues to pretend that there is no objective right or wrong and that any conflict between Democrats and Republicans, Iraq war opponents and supporters, fans and opponents of the Constitution, is nothing more than "he said, she said":

Iraq debate is sea of statistics

By RICHARD LARDNER

WASHINGTON - In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't.

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.

The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures from Petraeus' command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now as they were six months ago; the Bush administration and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed.

With so much depending on how the statistics are collected and interpreted, policymakers in Washington are confused.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, summed up the situation during a hearing last week on the report by congressional auditors at the Government Accountability Office.

"What is really going on? What standards should we look at? Where do we go from here?" asked Skelton, D-Mo.

For every positive step, a negative one follows.

Oh, it's just a sea of statistics! Help, help! Save me, General Petraeus!

The whole article goes on in that vein. The point is to make everything seem Oh So Terribly Confusing -- so much so that even we high-powered media folk can't make head or tail of it, so why not just leave it to the experts in the Bush Administration?

Arrrrrrrrrgh. This article pretends to be deep and authoritative, but it's all about muddying the waters.

No acknowledgement that Petraeus is Bush's sockpuppet, reciting a "report" written by the Bush White House. No acknowledgement that Bush and Petraeus have done this same dog-and-phony show before. No acknowledgement that the Bushistas have been fudging, seriously fudging, the data they control -- the "sea of statistics" isn't quite so confusing and seemingly contradictory when all the lies are stripped out, but the picture that's painted isn't one that Team Bush wants us to see. And certainly no acknowledgement that the general public isn't buying the Bush-Petraeus con job.

And the members of the GOP/Media Complex wonder why I call them that.