Success Of The Surge

John McCain has been insisting that his 100 years in Iraq comment is being taken out of context. That in fact what he meant is that American troops can stay in Iraq for fifty or 100 years if American troops are no longer being attacked. This assertion leads to a...

President Bush today announced that he would be following U.S. Army General David Petraeus' recommendations to withdraw 25 percent of American combat forces from Iraq by the end of July. Despite the president's assertion that the withdrawal of these troops represents a "return on success" from his "surge" policy, the...

Was Dave Petraeus really Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?

This past week saw General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker come back to Capitol Hill for many more hours of grilling and stalling -- for what's now irrefutably clear is that "stay the course" really means not the mission in Iraq so...

The Petraeus/Crocker testimony on Capitol Hill this week was quite grim. In comparison to their last testimonials in September 2007, they reported that almost nothing has changed. Is it their fault? Of course not. I have no desire to "armchair quarterback" the people who are tasked with making Iraq an...

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then --...

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are testifying this week that the "surge" has worked. They claim that violent incidents have decreased and that progress towards victory in Iraq has been made.

When you look at the surge in purely military terms, it has reduced violence. Our men and women...

(written with Ilan Goldenberg)

Here's a wrap up of the entire day of hearings. Only 14 hours til tomorrow...

1. Petraeus and Crocker refuse to tell us what our long term strategy is in Iraq, holding to the weak excuse that they can't make predictions into the

If the surge were a success, Mc Cain and Bush would be bringing home the troops. The fact that McCain and Bush want to keep the surge in place means the surge is a failure. The need to keep the surge means there is a need to keep Iraq from...

Gen. Petraeus will be answering questions on Capitol Hill this week, and since it's the congress and not the press doing the asking, there might even be some hard ones.

My personal recommendation would be to ask about the toll that repeated deployments are taking on our troops. If you...

Have you heard the news? "The Surge" is about to end. The next phase of our 100 Year War is "The Pause." Surge, Pause... Surge, Pause... We can't pull out! It's all starting to sound a bit sexual, isn't it? But the American people are the ones getting screwed.