For many of us with some gray in our hair, we've seen it all before-and, ironically enough, exactly 40 years ago. What Gen. David Petraeus has set in motion, or at least condoned, is the massaging of data to justify what his boss, President Bush, wants to do in Iraq; namely, to keep enough troops "in the fight" in order to stave off definitive defeat before he and Vice President Dick Cheney leave office in January 2009. That's what the "surge" is all about, and Petraeus is smart enough to know that only too well.

Like his apparent role model, Colin Powell, he can bear four stars on his shoulder, but he must also bear on his conscience thousands of dead and wounded troops as a result of his eagerness to play in the Bush/Cheney charade. A more precise counterpart to Gen. Petraeus is the late Gen. William Westmoreland, commander of our forces in Vietnam. The argument over whether or not the "surge" is working brings back un-fond memories of the deliberate smoke-and-mirrors approach Westmoreland forced on intelligence analysts in Saigon-and Washington-including deliberate falsification of the numbers on enemy strength.

The testimony of General Petreaus should be lokened to a Soviet army general appearing before the Politburo and telling them how great things are going for the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

According to Patraeus, a few thousands troops might be withdrawn by the summer of 2008, which purely by accident will be only a couple of months before the elections and in the midst of the presidential campaign. Since I could have, and did, predict just about every single word the general has said today, my only surprise was that he didn't show up with a large sign pinned to his chest proclaiming:"Vote Republican in 08".

He gets a privilege not extended to anyone else in life as far as I know-he gets to grade himself. Imagine an Olympian gymnast being allowed to grade herself. I'm certain that each time she gives herself a perfect 10, no one would have a problem with her objectivity. I'm sure that there are many instances in which a general has admitted failure, But for some reason, I never heard of any.

General Petraeus repeated the talking point of the white house in such a laughable and predictable way that his first statement, claiming he has written his own report wth no interference from above was plainly false, even before he started to feed us the ridiculous nonsense he spent the day dispensing. The macabre scene he participated in was taken from the Soviet playbook. Soviet generals would tell the public how gerat their military was doing in Afghanistan, when the erality was the complete opposite. The Iraqi people themselves, the only ones who really know, clam by a wide margin that the surge has failed. The general is lying, and should pay the price for it.

"I wrote today's report" means in English:The white house dictated every single word of my fairy story and made it perfectly clear what would happen to me and my career if I told the truth.

We spent over a trillion dollars to speed up the collapse of the Bolshevik eastern block and ended up becoming a Bolshevik state with a corporate media that would make Pravda proud.

What really concerns me is that Joan Walsh seems to be in bed with Camille Paglia. I've been trying to figure out why that phony dodo brained wretch is writing for Salon, but to no avail.

In military drill there is something called the preparatory command and the command of execution. These were the two commands, followed in lockstep by the press yesterday:

Prepare to kiss ass.

Kiss ass.

Or should I say David Petraeus' ass, followed by a whole raft of retired generals who were immediately featured on the television "news" to re-spin the Petraeus' spin, where he used the terms "al Qaeda Iraq" and "ethno-sectarian" about 2,000,000 times apiece in the space of a few hours.

This nickname was originally given to Petraeus by fellow officers who resented his overly political approach and mentality. They obviously know the man very well. As a matter of fact, taking into account that the Iraq occupation was blatantly illegal and unconstitutional and that Petraeus agreed to participate in a crudely political scheme to save the Bush presidency, providing faked information and data to the Congress, he is indeed a traitor and he has betrayed his country. Finally, Joe Klein didn't seem nearly as disturbed back in 2004 with the Swift Boat liars campaign against John Kerry, a genuine Vietnam war hero.

In a recent debate about Mother Theresa with Christopher Hitchens, he made a total fool of himself. Hitchens cited writings from various phases of her life in which she practically admitted that she doubted the existence of Jesus and God. Donahue, unable to refute her own writings, countered with the usual right wing personal attacks, calling Hitchens a 'dogmatic atheist' and advising him that 'an Englishman keeps quiet when an Irishman speaks'. These guys are serial attackers:when you oppose the Iraq occupation you are a traitor, hate America and an Islamofascist lover. When you suggest, with corroborating evidence, that a Catholic icon and saint was actually an agnostic, you hate 85 percent of the US population. These right wing militants hate free speech, unless performed by themselves.