In a democracy, the people should have a say in whether or not we go to war. Oh, 70 some percent of Americans did say we should go to war, nevermind.

What the heck does "counter-malign" mean?

From the Democracy Now! transcript of a portion of the testimony:
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GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: ... a failed state in Iraq would pose serious consequences ... for the efforts to counter-malign Iranian influence.
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That was not a typo. If you listen, it is clearly the word he used. I suspect that this is the world's biggest Freudian slip.

I think the General was freaked out by the bipartisan 2nd committee where everyone from Feingold to Voinovich wanted an end to Iraq. I think that shocked him and he realized that he should put his country first and not politics.

THIS WAR IS POINTLESS.

We the people are throughly fed up.
"Revolutions are the locomotives of history."
-Karl Marx

We MUST talk to our "enemies"!! The stance of this administration is absurd. Hillary also said she wouldn't talk to them. Has anyone ever heard of DIPLOMACY?

Completely insane

They have really no choice but to talk to Iran. Iran is calling all the shots in the region now.After the "elections" in Iraq, I think it was the Guardian, U.K,, that asked. "Who won in Iraq? Answer: Iran".

This consequence of the invasion was predictable and, in fact, predicted by many. Whether we stay or leave, Iran now has a friendly Shia country as a neighbor. If there has been a winner so far in this "war", it is Iran.

Missing from the discussion is the fate of some 12 million Sunnis in Iraq. Their insurgency is on hold because Petraeus is bribing their fighters to not fight. Once the bribes stop, or if someone finds the money to bribe them with more money, another round of bloobath would ensue.

Furthermore, an estimated 2 million Sunnis are refugees in neighboring countries with majority Sunni populations, such as Egypt and Jordan, and are being urged by people in those countries to go back and fight against the Shia government.

This thing is far from over, unless we launch a massive diplonatic effort involving not just Iran, but also Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and others. Basically, we would have to beg these countries to help us end the quagmire and let us out of there in a better way than we had to get out of Vietnam.

I think Senator Obama urged for this approach yesterday. And, as he was right before this war started, he is right again.

Petraeus is ready to talk to Iran again? Well David, I'm sure they'll get back to you and let you know when it's convenient for them to talk to you. They are, after all, calling the shots and controlling the agenda in Iraq. Their boy Maliki has seen to that.

Gen. Patraeus is a Bush general. He is not the brightest--and could be the worst this job. By all the evidence, Patraeus is a modern day General McClellan who vacillates between being effective and ineffective. If anyone troubles to read Col. Douglas MacGreagor's account of Patreaus in the early days of the Iraq invasion, Patraeus demonstrates no brilliance. I predict that Patraeus McClellan will deploy the rhetoric of deferral, inching forward in circle show a lot of courageous indecision.

Ironically, The US is backing the most pro-Iranian faction in Iraq, the one it installed as "the government". Mukhtada Al-Sadr also has some Iranian backing by virtue of being Shi'ia, but he's basically an Iraqi nationalist, whereas the mullahs of the Supreme Shi'ia Council that form the majority of Al-Maliki's government are Iranian financed, their Badr militia (which forms the core of the Iraqi Army) is Iranian trained, and their ideology is pro-Iran. We're backing the faction most inimical to ourselves and shooting ourselves in the foot in doing so, which is fairly typical of any Cheney/Bush foreign policy.

Patreaus and Crocker are just snake-oil salesmen, peddling the administration's agenda, which is to keep the war going for the sake of the war profiteers (themselves). There were never any WMD's or presence of Al-Qaeda, much less nuclear weapons: the main selling points for going to war in Iraq, to begin with. We were then told the war would be a cake-walk, we'd be greeted as liberators, the oil revenues would pay for 90% of the war costs, there'd be political reconciliation and a democracy in place. When things went sour, we were begged to give the "surge" (escalation) a chance, with 18 benchmarks for success that were to be met within a year. Only 4 have been realized, and those are deemed fragile and reversable, yet we're now supposed to halt promised troop withdrawals, so we can await for more progress, as yet unspecified or declared in terms of goals.
This war was planned without a strategy by incompetent, but politically loyal PNAC Chicken-Hawks, who never put on a uniform, served anyone but themselves, have no knowledge or experience about the aftermath of taking down a strong central government, reconstruction or security. This was a conspiracy to loot the treasury, give windfall profits to oil companies (who covet leases in the region), and hand out no-bid contracts to firms in which each has personal interests. They've each profited handsomely, while Americans are losing jobs, benefits and their homes, and our military is being brutalized.

Talk to Iran? Nobody in this admin is going to talk to anybody. The only plan that bush has, is to do nothing. He is going to leave this mess to the next president, while he sneaks out of dodge. Bush did what he wanted to do, one up his stupid dad, and that is all this war was about in his little pea brain. America has paid a heavy price for, the son trying to out do the dad.

As long as our policy towards Iran is regime change (and it is) the Iranians have no incentive to talk to us. They're not going to negotiate themselves out of existence.

The key word about talks with Iran is "again". The USA has been "talking" with Iran at all levels with the exception of executive to executive on an almost continuous basis. For an extended period of time these talks were conducted through the US' European partners and the US' Middle Eastern partners; there have also been direct high level talks at the ambassador level. So, the contention the US isn't or hasn't talked with Iran isn't correct. The real issues revolve around Iran's efforts to increase their influence within the Middle East by direct action against their neighbors, their direct support of attacks against Israel, their continuous efforts to build nuclear weapons and the means to deliver nuclear weapons, their continuous support of terror, et al. So far, for over 30 years, talking with Iran has proven to be a futile exercise. Perhaps, Iran's dictatorial, authoritarian theocracy might be the root cause of it's problems in dealing with the world?