The Petraeus hearings may go down as the most fraudulent road tour since Milli Vanilli.

[marmar]

from Messenger Post Newspapers, via TomPaine.com:



Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
Michael Winship, Messenger Post Newspapers
September 11, 2007


Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes a weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York.
A journalist I know who has spent a lot of time in Iraq tells the story of talking to an American infantry major in Baghdad the day Saddam's statue was toppled in Firdos Square, almost four-and-a-half years ago.

He asked, "What now?" The officer replied, "I expect our job is over." He thought thousands of military police immediately would be airlifted in to patrol the streets of Baghdad. "We can't do that with our tanks and Bradley's and howitzers," the major reasoned. "We're not equipped to do that." Surely, he believed, the United States government, which he so proudly served, had a plan.

But Washington didn't. And so there was rampant, unchecked looting, and then the sectarian violence, insurgency, bloodshed and terrorism that traumatize Iraq to this very day.

Throughout, the Bush administration has misinterpreted or cooked or hidden the numbers that tell the real story: the number of attacks, the number of suicide bombings, the numbers of civilian dead and wounded. For politicians and generals, statistics (as I have quoted an old British truism here before) are like a lamppost to a drunk—used more for support than illumination.

Which brings us to Army General David Petraeus, commander of our forces in Iraq, and United States Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. Both are distinguished men with estimable records of service to their country, but their joint appearances in D.C. this week may turn out to be the most fraudulent road tour since Milli Vanilli traveled the world lip-synching to other people singing "Girl You know It's True."

Their congressional testimony feels like the latest round in a game that over the course of events has gone roughly like this: Step over this line. Okay, now step over THIS line. Fine. So, step over THIS line... and on and on. In January, when the president announced the surge, he told us that by September we'd know if it was successful. Now we're asked by Petraeus and others to wait another six months—that next March will be the new September—and even further, if you believe Robert Draper's new book, "Dead Certain," in which President Bush is quoted as saying, "I'm playing for October-November." Read: Election 2008. Let it be someone else's problem. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/09/11/lies_damned_lies_and_statistics.php

[Olney Blue]

1. He did his best to do exactly what the shrub told him to do.

x(

[muntrv]

2. That's an insult to Milli Vanilli. They're not that phoney.

[liberal N proud]

3. More fraudulent then the lies that led up to the war?

Not questioning the fraud that was perpetrated these two days but we must not forget how we got there in the first place and those WMD's that terrible man in the desert was harboring in an eminent attack on the American people.