We should take what we can get

Folks, here is my take on all this smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show.

I don't fucking care how much Bush and Petraeus lie to us as long as some of the troops are withdrawn.

Yeah, Iraq is doing fine, Maliki is in charge, the Iraqi police and military have control, everyone respects the law and new constitution, yada, yada, yada.

I'll be patient while you laugh until it hurts. Please do return.

Bush, we aren't complete idiots (some parts are missing), but we know your lies and don't believe you for a minute, but if those lies allow you to save face and deliver our objective to save some American troops' lives. That's, as they say, goodness.

Petraeus said that while it is still “very dangerous” in Iraq and the insurgents remain “capable” of carrying out what he called barbaric attacks, he believes that this summer the surge has produced an “initiative, in general, against al Qaeda, which is a change, and that is an important change.

“Eight of the past 11 weeks have seen the number of incidents, the number of attacks, come down, and to the point that they reached a level that’s about the lowest in well over a year, I think,” he said. “Civilian casualties [are] still certainly too high. But again, pretty substantial progress, and certainly, trending very much in the right direction.”

He specifically points to the progress in al Anbar Province, which was once an al Qaeda hotbed.

And this bullshit from Bush:

President Bush on Monday made a surprise visit to Iraq for meetings with his commanders and senior Iraqi officials, raising the possibility that some U.S. soldiers could soon begin to withdraw from Iraq if security gains in recent months continued.

Bush's visit to Iraq - his third - was a dramatic move with a clear political goal: to set the tone for a series of upcoming hearings in Congress. The hearings are expected to be critical of the administration's strategy, but Bush tried to pre-empt opponents' pressure for a withdrawal by hailing what he called recent successes in Iraq and by contending that only making Iraq stable would allow U.S. forces to pull back.

This's what we call reality. If you lie to us and still give us what we want we won't piss on you. Got it?

Oh yeah, watch for Petraeus to mention al Anbar province often. It is one of the few successes in Iraq, but not because of the SURGE™. That was Iraq's doing. There are several accounts of this. Here is one:

THE ANBAR AWAKENING....Josh Patashnik has other problems with National Review's latest editorial about Iraq, but it's this passage that makes me want to bang my head against the wall:

The fact is that the surge is President Bush's policy, and one that he implemented over the vociferous opposition of Democrats who thought the best strategy against al Qaeda in Iraq was to begin to leave. Now the surge has helped turn Sunni tribes against al Qaeda, advancing the goal that nearly everyone in the U.S. notionally shares of routing the terror group from Iraq.

Say it slowly: This. Is. A. Lie. The Sunni tribes began turning against AQI nearly a year ago. They did it on their own, not as part of any American military plan. They did it before the surge started. They did it before Gen. Petraeus was even a gleam in George Bush's eye.

This is the Bush administration. They flat out lie and you believe them. Get real. Iraq is going to have to resurrect itself after the coalition forces leave. Most likely a strong person like Saddam will emerge and all will be hearts and flowers except for the slight problem of ethnic cleansing which is just so so bad.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Bush? Consider it done.

Via Mercury News