O'Hanlon Strikes Again

Somebody pass Glenn Greenwald the smelling salts.

Michael O'Hanlon appeared today on CNN to discuss the pre-emptively leaked GAO report. You'll recall this report was hustled center stage in order to broadcast its findings before the Bush Administration and Pentagon could get their grubby little fingers on them and deftly spatula the turd into a miniature Statue of Liberty.

But such a pessimistic view simply cannot be right, per O'Hanlon. He would know - after 7 1/2 days of Petraeus's personal guided tour of the Green Zone, military-approved data and hand-picked "interviews". After all, he spent as much as 4 hours in some of the cities he described.

O'Hanlon worries that the Government Accountability Office is pushing iffy data upon a gullible public, and tsk-tsks thus:

Gen. Petraeus just gave an interview, I think yesterday, to an Australian paper, in which he said that there could be a 75 percent reduction in sectarian killing since the winter time. Now let’s allow for the possibility that Petraeus’ data isn’t quite right.

Let’s allow for the possibility that in other parts of Iraq, things could be a little worse perhaps. Still, a 75 percent reduction is very striking. GAO by contrast is apparently saying, “no documented change whatsoever in the secuity environment.”

I just don’t understand how that could be their conclusion. And I will look forward to their report. I hope it’s a flaw in the draft that will be improved in the final result.

Not to worry, Mr. O'Hanlon. The Pentagon's right on that. Next time we hear of the report, it will be standing before cameras, holding up a copy of today's newspaper, and assuring us it's being treated well.

Here is O'Hanlon, gamely pretending his very tiny fig leaf protects his dignity in an interview with Glenn Greenwald:

GG: The first line of your Op-Ed said:"viewed from Iraq where we just spent the last eight days interviewing American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel..."

How did you arrange the meetings with the Iraqi military and civilian personnel?

MO: Well, a number of those -- and most of those were arranged by the U.S. military. So I'll be transparent about that as well. These were to some extent contacts of Ken and Tony, but that was a lesser number of people. The predominant majority were people who we came into contact with through the itinerary the D.O.D. developed.

[snip]

MO: If the suggestion is that in a 1,400 word Op-Ed, we ought to have mentioned that, I can understand that criticism, and if we should have included that, I apologize for not having done so. But I want to stress that the focus here was on the perspective of the U.S. military, and I did a lot of probing of what I was told, and remain confident in the conclusions that we reached about the military successes which we highlighted. But if you're suggesting that some of our impressions might have been shaped by the military's selection of Iraqis, and that we might have disclosed that, that is, I think, fair enough.

Atrios didn't have to sift through too many candidates for today's Wanker of the Day.

For more of this gruesome performance, you can see the video at Think Progress.

UPDATE: The State Department agrees with the essentials of GAO's findings.