Just The Facts, Ma'am. (Pt. II)

Here's a video looking at fact vs. fiction from the surge, courtesy of the TPM crew-



The articles they mention in the video are available here... the AP one, the LA Times one, and the NY Times one.

After months of near-silence, more and more people are starting to discuss the reality of the surge, not satisfied with the latest rounds of 'turning the corner' rhetoric. This has the Bush/war cultists a little bothered.

Drudge put up a headline on how Democrats are already 'dismissing' Petraeus. A post at the National Review laments the same thing, posting an email noting some Democrats are referring to the report as the 'Bush report'. The email concludes, "They must really want the report to come across in the press as administration hackwork rather than an honest assessment of the situation in Iraq." Well, umm, that's because it's the truth.

Nothing sinister about calling a spade a spade. The administration and its defenders justified the surge in January by agreeing to a number of benchmarks and now are insisting that, not only does it not matter that they haven't been met, but even having benchmarks at all was unfair. They are now re-justifying it with metrics of 'progress' that, upon inspection, simply aren't true. They hyped up the infallible Petraeus, then got angry when people revealed his report is actually a White House project. This deserves to be dismissed as the hackery it is.

Of course, Democrats will cave. But conservatives will complain they didn't do it quicker.