2007 - A general, beloved and adored by the ultra-conservative Right, reported on his successes in IraqNam.
The report was a metaphor for cherry picking and creative writing. Robert Wexler (D-Fla) called it a massage job in public. In private, he was less generous. Harry Reid called it an impressive feat of creative writing.
The Republicans responded to the Democrats in farce. Senatwhore Kyl called it a brave, accurate, honest, and informative, and others accused the Democrats of being traitors and unpatriotic. (recall how the GOP unified and repeatedly attacked Dick Durbin for complaining about torture committed by our troops, June 2005) Still others were even more dismissive and attacking. As we saw, time and time before, the Democrats caved, if somewhat less so this time. When the media is as fawning and blinded as the GOP, reality has as much impact as the Theory of Evolution to conservative christians.
The Cheney Bush administration accepted his status report and his recommendations wholesale, applauding the talent and hard work of Petraeus.
FROM THE CHURCH OF INEFFABLE STUPIDITY:
What followed was farce upon farce, upon farce.
Ignoring the facts on the ground, the unmitigated disaster that his early (2005) elections in Iraq had become, and the "totally divorced from reality" manner in which Petraeus loinvgly described his success, Bush increased the troop levels, hid data about Iraqi deaths and injuries, and refused to allow investigations into contractor fraud, contractor torture, CIA torture, contractor murders and rapes, and the generally disastrous conditions that Petraeus' approach had created.
W did not stop there. He promoted Petraeus to fix Afghanistan as well as he did IraqNam. Newspapers, even the vaunted Grey Lady, were naming Petraeus as a likely future GOP nominee for president. He was promoted to run Central Command, one of the most powerful positions in the military.
Unfortunately for the Iraqis, and soon, the Afghans, Petraeus suckesses mainly existed only in his writings, and not so much on the ground. Unpleasant truths kept leaking out, returning troops kept informing family and friends that what they heard on Fox or Rush (the only US news sources that some troops were able to receive out there) was totally wrong, and that the situation in Iraq was a pile of crap that kept growing in smell and size.
MoveOn started a campaign which can best be described as accurate, yet doomed to failure. Betray-Us was right, but the spinelessness that existed in the Democratic side since 9/11 caused the effective, honest and informative Ad to be pulled, with apologies.
Shades of Durbin's drubbing, anyone? And much like the complete lack of impact that Durbin's 2005 statement had on our war crimes, MoveOn's ad only caused the MSM, the entire GOP (in lockstep), and all too many spineless democrats to attack . . . MoveOn.
The self-promotion talents exhibited by the General far exceeded his impact on two war zones. But, because there was no draft, little non-embedded reporting, and almost no news coverage of this nation's two longest wars in our 240 year history, it mattered not.
Obama, still struggling with his natural urge to compromise and cooperate for the nation's good, kept him in place, and elevated him even further. Given the GOP's refusal to do their constitutional duty to advise and consent on many offices, judicial, military, and otherwise, perhaps his selection to run the CIA was not much of a surprise. A disappointment, to be sure, but not so much a surprise. The only redeeming part of his promotion was that his self-promoting PR campaign was detoured and radically slowed. In fact, only one biography was completed, a fawning, loving, tender description of a military superman, the bestest, greatest, sexiest general America has ever seen.
Betray us? You bet. Not just once, but many times.
Yes, there is a mantra, "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE." But I don't think that his wife of 38 years suspected that those thanks included servicing a hot female journalist. For years, I felt that Betrayus was simply too good to be true. The blinder-wearing, fawning media, the unified, lockstep protection provided by the GOP - Their fault is a big as his. I just hope that he took the CIA job more seriously than he took his biography.