Joe Isuzu Petraeus

He's lying.

Contrary to claims made by Gen. David Petraeus that sectarian violence has decreased dramatically, the GAO report is unable to report any progress on this front. Moreover, it notes that “average daily attacks against civilians” has remained unchanged:

It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased–a key security benchmark–since it is difficult to measure perpetrators’ intents, and various other measures of population security from different sources show differing trends. As displayed in figure 4, average daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007.

They are not counting car bombs as deaths, that's how they're getting to these numbers. Because they're only focusing on "sectarian violence," I guess.

The GAO Comptroller all but charged Gen. Petraeus and the Bush Administration with lying.

While Walker wasn’t privy to the Pentagon’s information, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) said he recently met with Gen. Petraeus and was shown “the data in August.” Coleman said the data is “very clear about a reduction in violence. General Petraeus has those charts,” Coleman explained. Walker responded by hinting that an unclassified version of the GAO report contains more explanation of the administration’s claims about reductions in sectarian violence. He said:

"Without getting into detail, let’s just say there are several different sources within the administration on violence. And those sources do not agree. So I don’t know what Gen. Petraeus is giving you. I don’t know which source he’s using. But part of the problem we had in reaching a conclusion about sectarian violence is there are multiple sources showing different levels of violence with different trends."

This is nothing more than political spin from a military commander. It's patently obvious, and not even a master of PR like David Petraeus can hold off the truth.

UPDATE: You have an Iraqi national security adviser who would rather watch cartoons than talk to American legislators. Do you really think there's any semblance of progress?

UPDATE II: Hilzoy takes apart the GOP talking points.