All the King's Men

In a series of Pentagon video briefings yesterday, the Bush administration brought what Senator Jim Webb referred to last week as the Iraq war "dog and pony show" straight into Washington, D.C. A report in the NY Times today comments on the purpose of the sessions with the American ambassador and top generals in Iraq with what can only be a touch of ironic understatement:

The video sessions appeared to be an attempt by the administration, at a critical juncture in the Iraq debate, to put forward generals and diplomats who are viewed by members of Congress as having greater credibility even than some White House officials.

But Paul Krugman lays his cards right out on the table, as usual, in comments focussed on Bush's latest favorite toy soldier, Gen. David Petraeus:

I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election.

In the article, General Petraeus told us that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously." And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders "are displaying courage and resilience” and "momentum has gathered in recent months."

In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.

So the great counterinsurgency guru Petraeus, the guy Bush has hidden behind since he fired the US military leadership opposed to the surge earlier this year, is another ambitious Republican sycophant. No wonder his Secretary of Defense is in tears.