With all the time I spent typing while trying to listen, I may have missed it, but I didn’t hear anything from any member of Congress during the day that suggested they had moved an inch in their feelings about Iraq as a result of the Petraeus and Crocker testimony. I take we ended up […]

… has put out a fact-check piece on Gen. Petraeus’s testimony.
p.s. They’re skeptical.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) challenged Gen. Petraeus about the 2004 Washington Post op-ed Petraeus wrote, giving an upbeat portrait of the progress he was making in getting Iraqi troops ready to stand up, so U.S. troops could stand down.
Engel (that’s him at right) asked why we should believe that his relatively optimistic assessment today will […]

Congressman  Brad Sherman (D-Cal) just came up with two unexpected exchanges with Gen. Petraeus, both on points I’ve wonder about.
Sherman (that’s him at right) asked Petraeus to consider the possibility that Congress might pass a law setting a deadline after which no government funds except for limited purposes, such as force protection or training. And suppose […]

I became an admirer of Ambassador Ryan Crocker since I read this Washington Post profile of him as he was being named to his current impossible job.
It included this:
“In late 2002, as the Bush administration prepared for war, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tasked Crocker and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns with exploring […]

If it is true that the appointment of the new leadership team of Crocker and Petraeus, and the new strategy of the surge are what has been needed all along and that Iraq is now headed in the right direction, who should be held accountable, and how, for leaving the wrong leaders in charge with the […]

Repeating what I said before about the need for simple, straightforward indices measured by neutral parties…
Gen. Petraeus was just asked about the allegation, which I recall reading in a Paul Krugman column, that in order to sustain a claim that sectarian violence is declining, he doesn’t count killings if a person is shot in the front of the […]

Writing during the first break in the hearing.
I’m trying to listen with an open mind to Petraeus and Crocker. It’s hard, probably impossible, when the main substance of their presentations have been known in advance, and have been debunked in advance by critics who have become more and more sure-footed by years of experience and […]

Good Monday morning Fellow Seekers,
Well there’s not much waiting left. Petraeus makes his first presentation today, and the letter he wrote to the troops is a perfectly good preview of what he will say, plus Michael Gordon of the New York Times has the leak.  And at this point, it isn’t much of a surprise. […]

Good Friday morning Fellow Seekers,
Other than the joint appearance by three of them on Almanac two weeks ago, Wednesday evening’s debate in Golden Valley between Al Franken, Mike Ciresi, Jim Cohen and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was the closest we’ve had to a debate among contenders for the DFL nomination for U.S. Senate.
I say the “closest to […]

If, like me, you’ve been surprised that a pro-choice candidate like Rudy Giuliani could continue to come out on top among Republicans in presidential horserace polls, the answer must surely, at least in part, be in these results from the Pew Reseach Center:

Good Thursday noon,
At midnight last night, Team Romney put out a press release, headlined: WHAT THEY’RE REALLY SAYING ABOUT GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY AT THE DURHAM, NH GOP DEBATE  (it doesn’t seem to be available online yet, I’ll link to it later if it shows up).
It claims, not only that Romney won last night’s GOP debate (I don’t […]

Good Thursday morning,
Following up on yesterday’s post about President Bush’s rhetoric, I’ve taken a stab at the kind of language and attitude that I think it would have taken for President Bush, in his dismissive remarks toward his critics yesterday, to actually get some people (myself included) who disagree with his Iraq policy, to at […]