As I write, the testimony of Gen. Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker is being taken by Congress. What's widely expected of this testimony is a recommendation that the "surge" stop being so much a temporary surge and more a lasting escalation. It seems that "the surge is working" only if you ignore unpleasant realities -- like the fact that the temporary escalation won't be temporary at all.
Not surprisingly, there is information you'll never see, testimony that won't be so public and facts that won't be discussed. Since the occupation must go on until Bush is safely out of office -- and it must, that's the mission in its entirety at this point -- the public will be presented only with reasons to stay. For the Bush administration and its handpicked yes-men/Generals, there are two sides to the story in Iraq; how well we're doing now and how gloriously victorious we're about to be. Certain facts, known to them, will not be known to you. Z. Byron Wolf of ABC News writes on his blog, Political Radar:
Coincidental to the very public testimony tomorrow by Army General David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, lawmakers with security clearance on Capitol Hill also got another, very secret assessment of Iraq last week -- this one a National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the US intelligence community.
And while the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker is sure to be grist for news on Iraq for some time, don't look for the Intelligence Committee assessment in the public anytime soon. Despite pleas last week from Democratic lawmakers that an unclassified summary of the classified document be released this week to go along with the Petraeus/Crocker testimony, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, decided... well, we don't know what he decided, because his reasoning for keeping the NIE secret is secret.
Senate Intelligence Committee members Carl Levin and Ted Kennedy, who've seen the report, issued a statement saying that "It is incomprehensible that the reply sent to us is labeled ‘For Official Use Only,’ thus not even permitting the public to see the reasons given for hiding this information from public view." Levin and Kennedy say there's no reason for classifying the summary. Apparently, there are no secrets in there. Which means that what we'll hear will be a sanitized version of the facts on the ground...
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