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It's "gimme more FUs day." The Petraeus/Crocker Dog and Pony Show and WH-Written Talking Points show continues. Meanwhile we have a special guest -- Rick Noriega -- for a live discussion today, coming up shortly.
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Consider this a thread to discuss Petraeus/Crocker testimony.
Democracy Arsenal is running an ongoing fact check of the testimony. And do take a peek at this post from Swopa.
Crooks and Liars has some opening statement from Rep. Lantos footage up here. And PoliticsTV has put the Petraeus opener up here.
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Christy!
Fuckery! Fuckery! Fuckery!
EvilDrPuma @ 2
Yup!
bring da noyz dems!!
EPU’d:
ET-pedia definition of AQ-Iraq - Whenever they can’t pin an incident on any obvious group, tribe, militia or whatever, it’s them!
otherwise we’re ALL fucked!! and am i to understand this duo will go before the senate also?
Ed*ard Teller @ 5
Al Qaeda in Iraq (or in Mesopotamia) is the only group that’s in Iraq because of us. They’re there on campus in Iraq getting their training from engaging US forces. The other groups are there fighting their own civil war.
These guys make Gonzales look like a rookie!
Is it true Congressman Roscoe Bartlett played Alfred in the Batman movies?
-GSD
After a question from GOP rep, Petraeus responds to NYT article re: US not counting car bombs and assassinations properly. He says that’s wrong. So now NYT will have to explain their source.
Jim Clausen @ 8
It’s hard to look like an experienced idiot.
Rep Geoff Davis, R-Kentucky
RE: Fighting in Cyberspace
“do you have suggestions for how we can better fight blah blah blah”
Boy, that last question about whether we should be following the road to splitting into 3 states with a loose central government or the other road toward a strong central government seemed to me to be quite a good question from a repug!
ok i’m stepping away from the lake - gotta cook for the kids - bbl y’all - carry on pups ;o)
I sure didn’t expect so very much talk about AlQaeda today…
I can’t take another word about we’re doing great and so are they, so we gotta stay and stay and stay.
OT, but possibly important, and this thread has cooled down:
It appears the Israeli jets training for the Iran operation the other day not only overflew Syria, but dropped their wing tanks in Turkey. The Turkish Foreign Minister is understandably pissed:
Turkey on Monday called the discovery of fuel tanks allegedly dropped by IAF aircraft “unacceptable,” and Syria branded it a “hostile act.”
Turkish officials complained to Israel over the weekend after the discovery of the unmarked fuel tanks near its border with Syria. Syria had alleged on Thursday that IAF aircraft entered its airspace and dropped munitions
juslin @ 6
Now that Hagel has officially decided not to run, maybe he’ll take his gloves off. At least that what Steve Clemons thinks.
Hunt Oil brought up. I wonder if he read Marcy.
A thought:
tomorrow morning these guys will be before the Senate foreign relations cmt and in the afternoon, the senate armed services cmt.
What isn’t being said?
What isn’t being asked?
Would calls to members make a difference?
http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/about.html
http://armed-services.senate.gov/members.htm
202-224-3121.
Whoa! Who is Kathy Castor?
A little truth happening here, gently, but she’s saying it.
This is the first time I’ve seen and heard Rep. Castor. Is she Blue America?
Kathy Castor’s hot. Florida has some hot Dem critters. I’m also thinking of Deborah Wasserman-Schultz.
Ed*ard Teller @ 16
I mentioned something about the Isr*eli Syria business here on Sunday I think. I bet it is coupled with the movement of our nuclear warheads from North Dakota to Louisiana. It seems a move to bomb Iran is well underway and planning runs are now afoot. Raum Emmanuel you may remember removed the non bomb Iran language from the earlier bill. He has dual Isr*eli- US citizenship (having also served in the former’s army)someone here noted. WHose national interests is he addressing in this case; the citizenry of which country is he prioritizing? Should a U.S. Congressperson be allowed to hold dual citizenship and vote on matters that impact foreign countries of which they are citizens.
Wow! Kathy Castor is finally asking the right questions. Good for her. Of course, Petraus is not answering any of her questions. He’s babbling on about something els.
At least she asked the questions.
Sorry, I should say that Kathy Castor is a D from Fla and just stated that there is a lack of trust in the leadership and a loss of credibility as a result. She stated the truth about the WMD lie and asked Petraeus how much longer he thinks it will take because Americans are not trusting much of what they’re hearing.
Sorry for those with no access.
Ed*ard Teller @ 21
If she isn’t she should be…*g*
TPM was reporting that Petraeus and Crocker had a hot date after testifying - with Brit Hume on Fox News.
Biodun @ 22
I soooo wish Debbie was on one of these committees. She’s the best at this stuff, cuts right through the bullshit.
Thanks for the #’s Zennurse - praying that the Senate will put P & C under oath & be relentless and pointed in their questioning. I know we are all cranky after today’s performance in the House.
Ish @ 27
Birds of a feather….
Should be well within their comfort zone….
Jed Clampett aka Skelton just brought up the reduction pre-SURGE!
Richmond (if you’re still here):
Notice I’m back in form…*g*
Shorter Petraeus and Crocker:
PONIES!! PONIES EVERYWHERE!
MSNBC.com Headline:
“‘Surge’ Drawdown: Petraus: Iraq Troop Reduction to begin later this month”
phoebes @ 24
Yes, I was pleasantly surprised to see a flower emerge from all the manure…but then it got buried with another heaping helping…
I expected more circumspection from Petraeus, but it seems he has whole heartedly embraced the Stay the Course philosophy.
That’s it…I’m out.
National Review online is declaring this clusterfuck “Another stunning victory for Gen. Petraeus.”
Biodun @ 32
How could I not, you are everywhere! Meanwhile I have a November deadline on this book manu, and can only check in as a “prize” for finishing a certain am’t of writing. Sweet I know.
Why are they being allowed to keep saying al qauda which represent 2 to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. Can’t someone ask him how he is defining this? This is so frustrating to listen to.
I cannot believe I’ve listened to this whole thing. There have only been maybe a handful of well-researched, meat and potatoes questions.
It has been an enlightening look at some of the US Representatives though.
Thank goodness for the break so I can shovel my way up out of all this BS!
Does anyone remember how many generals they went through before putting Petraeus in charge of the surge? I think it was 2-4.
The Petraeus Pony Plan.
And the unasked question: “General Petraeus, do you have anything to say to the parents, spouses and children of the six hundred Americans who will probably die in Iraq between now and next spring?”
Ed*ard Teller @ 36
National review counts victory by the number of ribbons, posture and testosterone count. For sure Ollie must have been a winner. (secret editorial policy revealed only on FDL. )
Crocker is….missing…they want to start…must be talking on the phone to Bush.
More OT from ET:
Marcy all but predicting RGJoe will bolt the Dems over the moveon.org ad.
Kate O’Beirne introducing the new product - Attorney General Ted Olson.
Lick those boots, Mckeon!!!
Ed*ard Teller @ 44
I am sure he was just looking for an excuse. Good riddance, Joe, and take your schill of a wife with you to the other side.
Kate O’Beirne introducing the new product - Attorney General Ted Olson.–ET
She and her ilk are part of the reason I don’t have a TV plugged in. One of the most unscrupulous women I’ve ever indirectly experienced. Although she sure did stimulate some intense snark here last year!
CTuttle @ 45
Becoming more and more obvious why this guy is W’s favorite general since Benedict Arnold.
Richmond @ 37
Pull your tongues back in, men.
Richmond, you’re slobbering all over your manuscript.
Have you noticed the other Talking Point today: “My travelogue experience with you, honored General” There is usually the brisk pace of the General and the mention of a large piece of military equipment.
Talk about morale being high and re enlistments being up but how about new enlistments? Also noticed that the question about whether the military was “broken” was never answered. Wonder if the Dems are going to ask it again????
well, i’ve seen just about as much as i can take right now…..
will check back later….
best wishes to the rest of the pups and appreciate the time at the lake…..
Petraeus: We don’t want to stay there forever, and we all want to come home, but we are there to do the mission our country has laid out for us, and we are there to take care of those who are there with us.
Now. Listen up General. Do not mix up the Neocon cabal mission with “the country”. The country has not laid out your mission. The mission the country wants you to do is to figure a way to get out of Iraq, now. Got that?
165,000 separate voices… morale is good… reup bonuses aren’t responsible for high reup rate… *gah*
kdh22 @ 49
*g*
Crocker’s bemoaning the lack of volunteers from foggy bottom… Hmmm… chicken hawks… *g*
Cara @ 51
His facts on re-enlistment were misleading. Many important combat specialties are seeing huge drops in re-enlistment, and for important support troops like medical support staff, the flight is at this point disabling, no pun intended.
I’m liking Sherman!
Shreman of CA practically shouting down Petraeus. He is essentially telling him that h the report the country wants a hundreds of pages report from the General from Baghdad and isn’t taking any nonsense. He is telling him that if the report coming from the WH is not credible. Very very impressive stuff.
Oops, Sherman, sorry for the typo.
Crocker saying the 9/15 report is an update of the July report and has been vetted by them for credibility. Hmmmm.
I am hoping for better from the Senate. Anyone have Selise’s link?
No one has asked questions regarding the contractors duties!
What are they, and are there killings of Iraqs counted? Are there numbers added to your report?
When are Repugs going to realize that no one within the Bush Administration’s sphere of influence has any credibility — especially the General, since Bush fired any who talked back?
zennurse @ 19
Will this help?
Jim Clausen @ 61
Here Jim.
When asked whether this report was written by him and not vetted by the WH - Petraeus said yes…he then disclosed that he had spent a week teleconferencing with the powers that be…so….so….I guess they all agreed what he should write then, right? No need to vet it out when you’ve all collaborated about what it’s gonna say….
Boneheads.
LS @ 66
Reminds me of the testimony for not-goodling (can’t remember her name, damn) who kept repeating that she couldn’t answer the questions but then did it anyway because she wanted to defend her friends and shoot her enemies. What was her name, the one with her hair in her face?
Monica.
Think Progress has this lovely accounting of how much time P has spent selling this surge…
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/.....us-august/
zennurse @ 67
The Reese Witherspoon character…I forgot her name…Cathy Martin?
newtonusr @ 65
Thanks, I have a sudden cold!(no work tomorrow)
Zennurse @ 67
LS @ 70
Monica. Monica Goodling.
Go Wexler!
Wexler of Florida is challenging the facts. States that 7 more troops have died during the meeting.
Jim Clausen @ 71
Oooo..oooo…Will Whitehouse be there?? I hope, I hope, I hope.
Uh. Oh. Petraeus is getting yelled at!!
unconventional conventionist @ 72
I think the referral is to the “not-Goodling”..the one that Leahey jumped on about taking an oath to the president.
Wexler’s cooking!
Oh, folks this is what everyone who left was waiting for, facts, facts, facts. I can’t wait to hear this response.
LS @ 76 - whoops! I’m a dork…
Whew! Now that is “kicking ass” Wexler.
LS @ 76
Yeah, that one. I’ll ask Marcy.
ps, wexler, How Many More names?
Call Petraeus out on this timing of the surge crap. They said that it would be for two months. That is why it was a surge. Now, Pet is saying it was supposed to run until April 2008.
Call him out on this BS.
WooHoo, Wexler!!
Petraeus says “I did not recommend extending the surge”…???
zennurse @ 81
I found it! Sara Taylor
If the Demos were united and topdown managed they would have ceded all their time to one spokesperson, yet Waxler should have been first to set their talking points back.
Divided we stand
Downstairs some folks were cheering the Ackerman takedown of Petraeus, but neglected to provide any details. Will someone please provide a recap?
Bob in HI
Vietnam Flashback
By Ray McGovern
September 7, 2007
Ray McGovern served as an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the sixties. He was then a CIA analyst for 27 years and is cofounder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.
My flashback was occasioned by press reports yesterday that senior Army officers in Baghdad were trashing the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate and the GAO analysis on grounds that they employed “flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
Speaking of flawed counting methodology, someone has inserted into the president’s mouth the claim that: “Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al-Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year.”
Finally, some good news! But wait. As a homework assignment, I invite readers to look up what has been said previously about how many al-Qaeda fighters may be in Iraq. Then do some arithmetic and try to calculate how many of them may now have been killed more than once.
Falsifying the Data
It was exactly forty years ago that my CIA analyst colleague, Sam Adams, was sent to Saigon to have it out with the Army intelligence unit there. After several months of exhaustive analysis, Sam had connected a whole bunch of dots, so to speak, and concluded that there were more than twice as many Vietnamese Communists under arms as the Army had on its books. Bewildered at first, Adams quickly learned that Westmoreland had instructed his intelligence staff to falsify intelligence on enemy strength, keeping the numbers low enough to promote the illusion of progress in the war.
After a prolonged knock-down-drag-out fight, then-CIA Director Richard Helms decided to acquiesce in the Army’s arbitrary exclusion from its enemy aggregate total paramilitary and other armed elements numbering up to 300,000. These categories had been included in previous estimates because they were a key part of the combat force of the Communists. The Adams/CIA best estimate was total Communist strength of 500,000.
The doctored estimate went to the president and his advisers in November 1967, just two months before the country-wide Communist offensive at Tet in late January/early February 1968 proved - at great cost - that Adams’s figures were far more accurate than the Army’s. Years later, when Adams and CBS exposed this travesty, Westmoreland sued, giving Adams his day in court - literally. Subpoenaed documents and the testimony of Westmoreland’s own former staff in Saigon established the accuracy of Adams’s charges, and Westmoreland withdrew his suit.
Right up until his premature death at age 55, Sam Adams could not dispel the remorse he felt at not having gone public with his findings. He believed that, had he done so, the entire left half of the Vietnam memorial would not be there, because there would be no names to carve into the granite for the last few lingering years of the war.
Ellsberg’s Regret
More recently, Daniel Ellsberg expressed great regret that he did not disclose earlier deceptions, as well as those witnessed during 1967-68 when the administration of Lyndon Johnson worked up plans to expand the ground war into Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam - right up to the Chinese border, perhaps even beyond.
Early in 1967, Westmoreland addressed a joint session of Congress and congratulated himself on the “great progress” being made in the war. What Congress did not know, but Ellsberg did, is that the war was going poorly, and that Westmoreland was on the verge of getting President Johnson to agree to sending 206,000 more troops for a widening of the war that threatened to bring China in as an active combatant.
Leaks to The New York Times put the kibosh on those plans. One patriotic truth teller leaked the 206,000 figure, which the Times published on March 10, 1968. Emboldened by that, Ellsberg himself told the Times about the suppression of the accurate 500,000 count of Vietnamese Communists under arms, the Donnybrook between CIA analysts and their fettered counterparts in Saigon, and other information about the games Westmoreland was playing.
The Times used those materials for major stories on March 19, 20 and 21. On March 22, President Johnson announced that Westmoreland would be leaving Vietnam to become chief of staff of the Army, and the general was told there would be no change in strategy to expand the war.
Things like that can happen quickly.
On March 25, 1968, Johnson complained to a small gathering of confidants: “The leaks to The New York Times hurt us … We have no support for the war … I would have given Westy the 206,000 men.”
Moral to the story: patriotic truth telling can prevent wider wars. Please take heed, those of you privy to plans for expanding the war in Iraq into Iran or elsewhere.
Spinning Hope
There will be lots of spin in Washington these next few weeks, and “hope” will be the byword. In his August 28 speech on Iraq, the president set the tone: “All these developments are hopeful - they’re hopeful for Iraq, and they’re hopeful for the Middle East, and they’re hopeful for peace.”
Bush goes on to mention that General Petraeus will be heard from shortly. Indeed, over the past several weeks, the president has been punctuating virtually every other public sentence with “General Petraeus” or “David.” It is as though Bush is expecting what might be called a “Petraeus ex machina” to extricate himself from the deep hole Cheney and he have dug together.
The spinning will only succeed if Congress is blinded by the nine rows of campaign medals and ribbons on Petraeus’s chest, forgets about the young men and women in our Army and Marines, and allows itself to be taken in by the new Westmoreland.
Jim Clausen @ 85
I’ve had it! Wake me up in eight or nine more Friedman units when the war is halfway over, will ya?
Crocker is talking in code now. What he really means is:
To Balkanize, or not to Balkanize; that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the citizens minds to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous Corporate Oil fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of Iraqis,
And by opposing, end them.
unconventional conventionist @ 84
I think we may have found it at the same moment, thanks, it was driving me crazy.
Gee - I didn’t realize the hearing continued past business hours.
OT: Is Selise here? YGM
Aah… I missed Wexler, Smith is looking good…!!!
I sincerely hope that tomorrow the Senators move from this point forward in terms of questioning these guys. I am floored at the poor preparation and wimpy questioning by these members and have written a few emails to folks on the foreign relations committee about that. I think we can count on Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold and Carl Levin for some challenging questions, some thoughfulness from Bob Casey and others. Unfortunately, we will have to put up with Norm Coleman’s schmoozing and back-slapping, but I really hope there is more push back than we have seen today. Some of this has been pretty pointless.
Ethno sectarian deaths..
Petraeus has been clearly told to fillibuster…..
Eureka Springs @ 94
Walls, I tell ya…!!! 8-(
Additionally, it will be interesting to see what Hillary does and Warner, too.
The CSpan site says these are separate hearings but online today I heard the announcer say they were joint hearings???
I hear Crocker and Petraeus saying over and over, If, If, If, and think that much of the if has to do with if there is a government to support it.
Engel: I’m fed up
zennurse @ 97
That doesn’t appear to be the case. I hadn’t heard that.
Check out Hillary when she confronted Pet regarding the surge - before the surge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....mp;search=
zennurse @ 97
The Senate’s will be two separate… Armed Services, then Foreign relations, today’s House testimony is a joint hearing of several committees…
Engel holding up the Petraeus OpEd from 3 years ago. Good on him. Rosy pictures.
FYI, Jane is upstairs
Wow, Engels is feeding Petraeus his own words from 3 years ago! Awesome.
good to hear about tomorrow, thanks, I misheard, obviously. Better that way, more punch.
hearings may end soon as there is a vote and a ceremony at 7
Just realized that Vitter is on the Senate Foreign Relations committee (!) — interesting to see him in action post-scandal
Who is that, that is so worried about garbage collection when people don’t have jobs and can’t leave their homes due to violence, no potable water, only a few hours a day of electricity. Is he living in a dream world?
The lady from California has a stinger!
The way they are describing Iraq you would have thought all of the Iraqi people used to live in caves before the invasion.
Well after the sanctions things did get far worse that before the sanctions.
LS @ 76
luridita sanchezzzz?