Of COURSE Patreus Was Right… Now It’s Down to Admitting It

Over at the Captain’s Quarters Ed makes a discovery:

The Washington Post’s editorial board noticed something over the last few weeks that many of us have pointed out all along. They l discover that General David Petraeus told the truth about the improving situation in Iraq. They have also found out that hardly any news agency seems interested in reporting it:

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we’ve said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces.A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004. …

This doesn’t necessarily mean the war is being won. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions — and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus’s credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq’s bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.

Let’s put it a little more simply: they lied. Being “wrong” would have meant them saying, “General Petraeus, your numbers appear to be incorrect,” or alternately, “We don’t believe these trends will last.” That’s not what Petraeus heard. He heard a Senator — someone vying to become Petraeus’ Commander in Chief — tell him that his testimony required a “willing suspension of disbelief”. MoveOn greeted Petraeus’ testimony with a full-page ad declaring him a potential traitor to his country.

All of that was very wrong on many levels, but his critics were much more than just incorrect. They lied about Petraeus, and the Washington Post lets them off far too easily.

….

Of course they let the Democrats off too easily. First of all, they support the Democrats, (That much has been obvious to anyone to the right of FideCastro, for some years, now…) and secondly, they are guilty of the same crime.  If one has watched over the last six months, one comes to that conclusion that what’s really going on here is that the Democrat party and the press ( a redundancy) came to the conclusion that the General did, quite some time ago.  The problem is it isn’t politically expedient to admit that, just now.

They’ve been slowly letting out at admission after admission, that the president was right going into Iraq, and that there is genuine progress being had there, in dribs and drabs.  They’d never dare make all the admissions at once by saying, “we were wrong”.  To make such an admission would be a kiss of death on two counts; they would totally lose the support of the whack job left, who will under no conditions admit such a thing… and they would also lose the support of the center, who has been misled by these people, for some years now.  It would take decades to rebuild any kind of trust whatsoever in both the press and the Democrats.

My problem with the Captain’s commentary, is he treats the Washington Post and the far left, as two separate entities.  The problem is they are not. They’re both part of the same cheering section, both guilty of the same crimes, the same wise, the same distortions. it should therefore be no surprise that they defend one another when these matters are brought up.  That should have been evident, to anyone who was seriously watching this, near on a decade ago.

And it’s not like we haven’t been getting reminders all along.  Consider the article that we posted just yesterday about Lieutenant General Sanchez and his speech. What the general actually said, and what made it into the Washington post, and the other paper of their parent company, the New York Times, can only lead one to believe that those papers are running a blocker for the Democrat party.

What’s it finally going to take to get the Democrats to admit fully how wrong they were?  How far out of line they were with their charges?  I frankly doubt that anything is capable of that.  Anything, that is, short of a landslide against them in ’08 and beyond… And as for the press, that message is already being delivered, in lower subscription rates across the board.  In both cases the clear message being transmitted that their lies are the reason why, will seal the deal.