Rusted Sky

The Urinal/Constipation printed Patraeus's letter to the troops in its Sunday @Issue section under the headline:

"A LETTER FROM GEN. PETRAEUS: Surge 'has not worked out as we had hoped'."

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/printedition/2007/09/09/petraeus0909.html

The quoted section of that headline is in Patraeus's letter but the AJC cherry picked it out of context and added it to the lead in to give the impression that Patraeus intended it to apply to the surge as a whole.

Here's the actual quote in context:

Many of us had hoped this summer would be a time of tangible political progress at the national level as well. One of the justifications for the surge, after all, was that it would help create the space for Iraqi leaders to tackle the tough questions and agree on key pieces of "national reconciliation" legislation. It has not worked out as we had hoped. All participants, Iraqi and coalition alike, are dissatisfied by the halting progress on major legislative initiatives such as the oil framework law, revenue sharing and de-Ba'athification reform.

To be fair to the AJC they did print the entire text of Patraeus's letter to the troops but the lead in they used taints the article with their pessimistic viewpoint and spoils any possibility of it being considered objective reporting.

otpu

You know, I REALLY wonder if the folks looking for a loss in Iraq are thinking any further than that event. I believe all they can see is how it'll hurt Bush and the Republican party - but I'm not sure they're even thinking about hurting the Republican party as such at this point, they're so stuck on Bush they can't see beyond him.

So IF they manage to succeed, and Bush leaves office, they're going to be in a rather unfortunate situation... almost literally having cut off some VERY important things (the future credibility of our using the military for ANY serious action, AND our credibility as a nation when it comes to helping friends and allies) and tossed out the window. It took us 15+ years to get it back after Viet Nam with essentially no actual threat against the US - how long will it take us to regain it in the face of the Islamic threat?

J.