Leaving the lying to the professionals

The much anticipated delivery of the report by General David Petraeus is descending into a sideshow. The war party has marketed David Pertaeus as a genius capable of turning the Iraq war around yet they neither trust him with writing the final report, nor it seems with delivering the report to Congress.

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

The White House is so happy with the way the surge is going that they are only prepared to allow Petraeus to appear inside a hermetically sealed bubble and leave the lying and spin to the professionals.

White House officials suggested to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week that Petraeus and Crocker would brief lawmakers in a closed session before the release of the report, congressional aides said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would provide the only public testimony.

You know you’re a lame duck president when you can’t even trust your puppets to manage your own propaganda.

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