Paul Waldman a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success, has a good article on The Utter Uselessness of the Petraeus Report in the web only issue of The American Prospect. A few excerpts:

If you think the White House-penned report on Iraq will be anything other than a validation of "the surge" and the Bush administration's larger strategy, you haven't been paying attention.

Unfortunately for President Bush, the public is approaching Petraeus's report with a healthy degree of skepticism. A CNN poll last week asked respondents this question: "As you may know, in September the top U.S. commander in Iraq will report to the President and Congress about how the war is going. Do you trust him to report what's really going on in Iraq without making the situation sound better than it actually is, or don't you feel that way?" A majority, 53 percent, said they don't trust Petraeus (who wasn't named) to report what's really going on. After four years of assurances about the "progress" being made in Iraq, the American people have just about had it.

When the report is released, the nests of conservative partisanship on television, radio, and newspaper op-ed pages will buzz with affirmation. "The surge is working," they will declare, and victory will be ours in the end if we remain firm, turgid, engorged with strength and will and resolve. Considering that the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination recently wrote in all seriousness that the United States was just about to win the Vietnam War in 1972 when we got soft and pulled out in an ignominious victorius interruptus, you can be sure this argument will find eager adherents among those on the right jonesing for their latest dose of Iraq Viagra.

As for those who disagree and raise doubts, they will find their attempts to marshal facts and evidence met with the usual infantile arguments ("Fight them over there!") and inevitable accusations of insufficient fealty to the troops. If nothing else, you can count on that.

And where will we have gotten? Nowhere. American men and women will continue to return home in flag-draped coffins, their young lives sacrificed on the altar of this endless nightmare, brought to us by men with minds so twisted they don't even realize what a mistake it all was. There is no other undertaking in American history that combines the crushing volume of delusion, dishonesty, bad faith, incompetence, and unforeseen yet utterly predictable consequences that is this war. As long as George W. Bush strides purposefully each day into the Oval Office, consumed with looking strong and holding fast, interpreting every feeling that rumbles in his gut as a telegraph from God informing him that he is right in all things, nothing will change.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_utter_uselessness_of_the_petraeus_report

If you could rewind history and have the supreme court give the election to Al Gore, would you? I bet yes would be over 80% if people were honest.

I’m glad you joined the discussion and offered your views without emotionally reacting to responders like Kitt who seems to need to vent from time to time. To look at why all the reasoning you have provided on the possibility of some military surge progress is pretty much useless, you have to look at the Shiite political goal from the time that daddy Bush wisely chose to not proceed to Baghdad for the reasons that Darth Cheney so eloquently stated on TV in 1994.

The Shiites and Iran plotted to con our idiot Neocons into invading Iraq and killing Saddam to gain total control of Iraq and reek vengeance on the Sunni because they did not have sufficient military power to do it themselves. After we did the deed for them, why in the world would anyone think that they would be for a unified, secular Iraq? All of the key Iraqi parliament and other players have ties to Iran. It is sheer folly, of which we have in abundance, to see any way out of this mess other than to accept a federalized partition even though it would be a hard pill for the neighbors to swallow. It is where we will end up in time if we want to prevent massive slaughter.

I see no chance for political progress when religious and tribal hatreds abound and where the enemy of my enemy is my enemy. It’s sad that we have to watch such a political farce play out in our government and the M$M and I fervently hope that the Iran doomsdayers are wrong although I thought invading Iraq was so stupid that it wouldn’t happen, so I may not be a good judge.