When a report doesn't fit what you want to hear, then yes you will likely do all you can to unvalidate it.

I think it was a pretty balanced report. However, I think that at the very least that the president got a copy/draft of the report a couple of weeks ago. Too many of his comments felt like they had been lifted from the report.

Ok. True the number of car bombs have decreased from a record high of 170 a month to 90 a month. And that's good. However, do we really want to define success as 90 car bombs a month? I remain skeptical.

I think it was a fairly accurate report as far as the facts went, but with a a heavy layer of optimism layered on top of the analysis.

I liked the fact that they put in facts/statistics to support the party line. Until now, it's seemed to be a "Just trust us" method.

I think that he's simply a puppet. He told the administration the facts, they told him how to interpret those results.

I think he put a lot of thought into the report. And I think that for now, at least, we have to take him at his word that the report is his view of the war and it wasn't influenced by people in positions of power.

In response to Cass:How can you say that? He presented the facts in an unbiased manner and told everyone what he thought. Many Democrats wanted Petraeus as the General because they thought he would be impartial, so Bush and others are not using him as a puppet. The problem is Liberals do not want hear any positive news about the war, so they take it as being untrue.

In response to Black Widow:When you jump out of an airplane and pull open a parachute, it feels like you are moving upwards. But, in reality, you are simply falling downward less quickly. IMO that's closer to how the "success in Iraq" should be interpreted. I mean, come on 90 car bombings vs 170 and we're happy? That's still about 90 car bombings too many, if you ask me.

Why do I think he's a puppet? If you look back at the news over the last month, Bush pre-preported most of the Petreus stats and interpretations. That's downright fishy in my opinion.

Here is the Daily Show take on the matter....





...go to the 5 minute mark.

In response to Cass:I saw that show too. Very funny, if it weren't so sad.

A more accurate assessment might be that things in Iraq seem to be sucking less lately. That's a lot different than the surge is a success.

In response to southboca:It is good at least that there were some numbers to support their conclusions. That seems to be a big shift from the past.

One of the stats that I thought was interesting was that in one of their sample neighborhoods where they were measuring success they had no electricity.

In response to Cass:Updating the president on statistics isn't the same as taking direction from him.