american troops

The Petraeus Performance

By Matthew Rothschild

September 10, 2007

The opening day of the Petraeus performance went pretty much according to script. The somber general and the geeky ambassador were careful to promise not victory but the possibility of success, vaguely defined. And, of course, Petraeus warned of the “devastating consequences” of what he called a “premature drawdown.”

Petraeus threw out a bunch of stats, flipped some charts, and pointed to tables all indicating that the situation is improving. These are suspect. “The number of overall civilian deaths” has declined since December, he said, for instance. But a report by the McClatchy news service on Sunday rebuts this.

Bring the Troops Home