Petraeus, Crocker, and Iraq

The transcript of the Petraeus opening statement to Congress is up at RealClearPolitics.

Patreaus's slides (via Pat Dollard)

The transcript of the Crocker opening statement to Congress is here.


The Petraeus statement is pretty much conformation of what we've been tracking militarily since the surge started. I didn't see much that would be new to anyone who's been following along. You know about Anbar Province and the fact that other provinces are following that model. Here's a press release from today from MNF-I on another citizen group turning called In 24-hr battle, Hawr Rajab turns on al-Qaeda. It's a short read, so check it out.

The Crocker opening statement is excellent. That's the one to read if you can only get to one of them. The questions we need answers to are on the political and economic sides, and Crocker does a great job of laying it out.

• My intention today is to give you an assessment of political, economic, and diplomatic developments in Iraq. In doing so, I will not minimize the enormity of the challenges faced by Iraqis, nor the complexity of the situation. Yet at the same time, I intend to demonstrate that it is possible for the United States to see its goals realized in Iraq and that Iraqis are capable of tackling and addressing the problems confronting them today. A secure, stable democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbors is attainable.

The anti-war crowd showed their true colors, as usually happens with their ilk, when today they took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling Petraeus a traitor, desecrated the Vietnam War Memorial, and disrupted the Petreaus and Crocker statements by yelling obscenities. The anti-war crowd has heavy ties to the Democrats through fund raising, so the silence from the Congressional Democrats today was deafening. Also, the group of lowlifes who took out the ad in the NYT has daily teleconferences with the leading Democrats, so it would be impossible for them not to know it was happening.