Blogs Predictably Split on Petraeus

Conservatives and liberal bloggers had widely diverging opinions on the testimony offered yesterday by Gen. David Petraeus.

Retired Col. Joe Repya, writing at Captain’s Quarters, attacked Democrats for having the temerity to criticize Petraeus, saying, “Sorry to state the obvious, but General Petraeus is one of ‘Our Troops.’ To imply that he is untruthful, misrepresents the facts, manipulates the numbers or allows intelligence reports to be ‘cherry picked’ is an insult to all of us who currently serve, have served or will serve in Iraq.”

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line found Petraeus’ statistics persuasive, saying, “General Petraeus acknowledged in his statement to Congress that many of the figures he cited cannot be determined with precision. He added, however, that ‘two U.S. intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq.’”

TheNewPundit of I’m a Pundit Too was direct and to the point, asking, “Why don’t we shoot traitors? And my other question is, why are traitors allowed to sit in their seats and lie their fucking asses off while bitching at Gen Petraeus?” TheNewPundit went on to add that, “If you are watching this right now, all you hear is a bunch of shit from a bunch of assholes telling the General that they already don’t believe what he hasn’t said yet.”

Read moreA number of conservatives attacked MoveOn for taking out an ad in the New York Times attacking Petraeus that asked if the general might be a “General Betray Us.” Dave Thul, writing at True North, said, “Now, I don’t begrudge anyone their freedom of speech. They can accuse him of interpreting the facts wrong, or being too close to the situation. They can call him a conservative Kool-Aid drinker. But as a general in uniform, reporting to Congress, they are accusing him of multiple violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice…”

And fanningp at PeteRepublic.org said, “If the Democrats don’t step up to the plate and denounce Moveon.org’s tactics of suggesting General Petraeus ‘betrayed’ his country, they are cowards, plain and simple.”

At least one conservative was hard on Petraeus, though.  Writing at Balloon Juice, John Cole, a conservative war opponent, looked at one of Petraeus’ slides closely, and observed:

Check out the way IED attacks are tabulated:

Total IEDs = IEDs Explosions + IEDs found + IED hoaxes

For good clean fun at home, replace the letters IED with UFO. Hell, we can do it right here:

Total UFO’s = UFO Explosions + UFOs found + UFO hoaxes

I am betting you all did not know there were that many alien invasions in the United States last year (and no, Malkinites, I don’t mean illegal aliens).

I would submit that, if all we have access to is this chart, IED hoaxes should probably be dropped from the tally of IED attacks if we really want to know how many IED attacks there have been in the past few years, and whether or not the attacks are dropping. There may be valid reasons for including hoaxes- I don’t know. But I want to find out why. Maybe if we had access to the data, we could check that out.

While most conservatives were supportive of Petraeus, most liberals echoed Cole’s criticisms. Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report noted Petraeus’ suggestion that we may start withdrawing troops by next summer. Pointing to a chart offered during testimony, Benen said, “[T]his chart, while colorful, doesn’t actually tell us anything, except the fact that U.S. troops will eventually be in Iraq in much smaller numbers. Whether that’s in nine months, nine years, or nine decades remains a complete mystery.”

Matt Yglesias summarized the same chart, saying, “Basically, the idea is that about nine months from now, we’ll be back to the number of troops we had in Iraq about nine months ago. After that, more stuff is supposed to change . . . maybe . . . sometime . . . if all goes well . . . maybe . . . at some point.”

Mike Kuykendall noted a Washington Post fact-check of Petraeus’ testimony. Referring to the MoveOn ad, he said, “It would indeed be a betrayal if one of our nation’s most respected military leaders were to try and bamboozle the representatives of the people, as a result putting more U.S. troops in harm’s way. From the looks of the evidence, that may very well be what happened yesterday.”

Maha at Mahablog mocked the idea that liberals had crossed a line in attacking Petraeus, saying, “Righties, of course, never cross lines. When they called former President Jimmy Carter a traitor, or when they called Senator John Kerry a traitor, or when they called Rep. Jack Murtha a traitor, that was entirely different. I don’t know why, but it was.”

And Pam Spaulding of Pandagon said that Petraeus had earned his criticism by being a partisan, saying, “I think all that you need to know about the level of spin control is the fact that somehow Brit Hume got an ‘exclusive’ interview wtih Petraeus and Crocker tonight to further massage the message.”