What does Petraeus’s fucking authority have to do with anything? The legislation requires him to give open testimony to Congress. The White House tried (and failed, apparently) to prevent him from giving any public testimony and sending its own mouthpieces to Congess instead. That’s about the White House trying to weasel out of adhering to the authority of Congress (which, newsflash, is an equal branch of government to the President) and to the legislation which the monkey hmself has signed.
Bush has also spent months saying that Petraeus will deliver the report and represented that Petraeus’ and Cocker’s assessments would be independent and untainted by White House filtering. Now they’re saying the actual written report will be a Karl Rove production (I know he’s gone but he’s not really gone and he probably already drafted the fake Iraq report before he left) which will be “interpreted” by the White House itself. In other words, there won’t be anything independent about it at all. Ity will just be another in house propaganda piece.
Fortunately, it looks like they can’t do anything to stop Petraeus from testifying before Congress (or can they? God only knows what they’ll threaten him with to keep him from saying anything truthful in public), but none of that has anything to do with Petraeus’ “authority.” That’s a non-sequitur in this discussion.
Damned good question. It’s gotten down to the point where we can’t trust them to be honest even on basic stuff like who is going to do what, hasn’t it?
If you’re saying we can assume that any connection between anything they say and the truth is pretty much random, I have to agree. I wish the ladies and gentlemen of the press would catch on to this, one of these days.
And I hope we can now take it as read that the usual ‘Yummy Kool-Aid, Give Me More’ types won’t be trumpeting the inevitable Panglossian account as any sort of ‘proof’ or justification?
Yup, yup. An’ bein’ President, well, that shore is hard work. Yup. We’re all workin’ hard, protectin’ th’ 'Merican people. 'Cuz there’s evil in the world, and they hate our freedoms. God bless America.
I can’t get too worked up about this, since I can’t imagine any president sending an unfiltered report from a general to Congress (whether that president is Bush, Clinton, Lincoln or Washington). Even if Petreaus personally wrote it and signed it, he’d be getting “help” with the writing from the WH.
However, if Bush thinks he’s going to get away with this:
Then he’s got another thing coming. Petreaus needs to be grilled by Congress, and that is going to happen whether Bush wants it or not.
Well, I’m saying more generally that public figures spin, and that you need to check to make sure they’re not being misleading.
And the administration report isn’t the only report Congress is getting. They’re also getting the Comptroller’s report, and the independent commission’s report, and the testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.
When General Petraeus and other generals have testified before, they have made a point of either not being there for the briefings or running from the room when uncomfortable topics were being discussed.
If Petraeus is to be grilled, the Democrats ought to show up for the picnic, wouldn’t you think?
I think you made some typos. You used ‘spin’ instead of ‘lie’, and ‘being misleading’ instead of ‘lying through their teeth.’
And who writes the Comptroller’s report, what independent commission are we talking about, and will we get to hear Petraeus’ and Crocker’s testimony?
At any rate, you take the outright baldfaced lies of this Administration quite calmly. Yes, I’ve known politicians to lie and spin and mislead; I’ve lived most of my life within an hour of the Capitol. But in the past, it’s almost never been over basic, simple, everyday stuff like who’s going to give a report. Hell, not even in the Nixon White House. Sure, Nixon lied about how well Vietnamization was working, and whether he was a crook. But I don’t recall his people lying about mundane stuff like this. So your ‘everybody does it’ line doesn’t cut it with me.
In this thread,RTFirefly and others were pretty upset over the fact that Petraeus had addressed a “Republican caucus” meeting. As it turned out, this wasn’t the case - this address of congressional representatives by teleconference was made overwhelmingly Republican because most Democrats, including all of the leadership, didn’t show up.
This happened again recently - and Democrats blamed “blast faxing”. The invitations were buried in Dick Durbin’s and Chuck Schumer’s piles of unread faxes, they said, and they didn’t attend as a result. Never mind that they have staffers that read these faxes - or should (this was once part of my job.) Never mind that no Republican blamed his nonattendance at the event on a fax problem.
And the most recent example of this, of course, is Nancy Boyda, who when confronted with the terrible spectacle of a retired Army general testifying about conditions in Iraq, had to leave the room to compose herself.
Democrats have a perception problem here, and they aren’t fixing it well. Let’s remember that General Petraeus was confirmed unanimously by these senators. They and our representatives ought to give him a listen without getting the vapors or blaming the fax machine.
In all honesty, does anyone expect the Democrats to change their position based on what Petreaus says (either way)? They’ve already pretty much made up their minds that we need to start exiting Iraq ASAP. We know from the news reports that any progress being made is minor, if at all.
This report is really aimed at the Republicans. They’re all hoping they can either find justification to join the Democrats in calling for a withdrawal, or somehow see light at the end of the tunnel. The Democrats are a lost cause (not that that is bad wrt the Iraq War).
I’m not sure how I’d feel about an open session of Congress grilling Petreaus. I want them to grill him, mind you, but I don’t know if I want that to be telecast around the world, even though I would personally like to see it.
Because I would have thought they would realize the reaction they would get when they changed their story at the 11th hour (as they knew they would).
That has been one of the most frustrating (and at the same time most entertaining) parts of the whole Administration - they make the simple things, the most mundane things, the easy stuff, so difficult for themselves.