St. Petraeus Speaks

Starts out by saying that the report is his and his alone (methinks he doth protest too much).

Now talking about progress on the security front, curiously in the same language as the White House! Imagine! Using statistics that are not backed up with any evidence.

"We will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge security level by NEXT SUMMER."

So he provides a chart that details "Iraq's security challenges," and it's a map of Iraq with "AQI" (Al Qaeda in Iraq) plastered all over it. This is just completely misleading. And the "lethal aid, training" stamp on Iran is similarly propagandistic.

There's just way too much talk of AQI here. Petraeus actually started out saying that the fight in Iraq is about competing resources between slef-interested groups. Then he drops that almost completely.

Now he's defending his methodologies. He's trying to say "my data is better than your data." Even though how he came up with his data is classified.

You can do a lot with statistics. Where's the "shot in the back of the head vs. shot in the front of the head" chart?

And wow, talk about missing the point. At the top of one of his charts is something I saw late last week, the change in the ACTUAL ethnic makeup of Baghdad. The so-called reduction of sectarian violence is DIRECTLY tied to the ethnic cleansing that has gone on for years and years.

Every time Petraeus says "the number of attacks have declined," add the phrase "that we've counted."