All he did was say that by the summer of 2008, US troop levels in Iraq would be the same as in December 2006. Yet David Petraeus, ever the stoic general, sat before Congress and claimed this would be a "very substantial withdrawal."
Critics of the war long suspected this was the Bush Administration’s strategy: revert to status quo pre-surge levels–130,000 troops–while trumpeting the exit and warning that anything more would lead to genocide/Iranian domination/US defeat/an Al Qaeda caliphate, etc, etc.
The question now is whether the media and political class will fall for the Administration’s PR trap?
Some in the media already have.
"The General’s Long View Could Cut Withdrawal Debate Short," write the usually astute Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks in the Washington Post. "Prospect of pullout raises some hope," said the Detroit Free-Press. "Petraeus upbeat over reducing US troop levels," wrote The Guardian of London.
Others in the media, however, sniffed out the Bush Administration’s long-term plan. "Bush policy to bequeath Iraq to successor," read the headline of an excellent Los Angeles Times analysis. "Viewed more closely," Paul Richter writes, "his [Petraeus] presentation, and that of US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, were better suited to the defense of an earlier strategy: ‘stay the course.’"
The latest manifestation of the Administration’s Iraq offensive might temporarily reassure the restless Republicans who waited until September to decide what to think about Iraq and then liked what they saw. But it shouldn’t satisfy Democrats in Congress. Rather than giving Petraeus the red-carpet treatment, they’d be smart to listen to their Democratic constituency, which is hopping mad over party leaders’ inability to effectively question Petraeus and refusal to use every tool in their arsenal to try and bring a close to a seemingly never-ending war.
