Michael has the transcript of the testimony of General Petraeus below. Here are links to the prepared speeches of both men along with the slides that general Petraeus used (alert, these are all three pdf’s.) McQ has salient points on the questioning following their remarks, of which there was too little, and it was ill prepared. Basically the house members gave their own prepared remarks, as if they had no actual interest in what the two men had to say. It makes one think they were not being skeptical in their remarks about what he would say before hand, but rather just preemptively attacking him. Who would have thought that?
Update: Links are fixed. Sorry. Here are a couple of the graphs showing the (two week?) trends in violence from Gateway Pundit. Check out the link above for the full set:
About Lance
I want to thank everybody who has encouraged me over the past few years to do this. I doubt it will hold but a few people's interest, but that is okay with me. Special thanks go to Peter over at http://www.liberalcapitalist.com.
I value my privacy a great deal, so I will guess you will have to get to know me over time to find out much. I am in the financial services, wealth management, investing or whatever you want to call it business. I have children, my oldest is entering college.
I have no great or imposing academic background, my grades varied from high enough to get invited to an honors program at my university to frustrating enough to cause my father great grief. My major was history, with a minor in ethics. My main interest towards the end was in the history of economic ideas before life took a turn and I ended up never going on to graduate school. However, I have a fair knowledge of history, economics, investing and would probably be considered well read. My tastes are eclectic and I pretty much find the entire world interesting.
I have an enduring interest in how people learn about and analyze the world; my posts here will examine this topic in detail over time. I make no claims to be above the very biases and errors I see in others, in fact it is my belief that we are incapable of escaping them, only moderating their control over us.
I am a member of no political party, but I would broadly consider myself a man of the right. I am inclined to free market economics, limited government and a fairly narrow view of the role of the state. A small L libertarian if you will. However, if you are looking for broad based "the left believes..." or "wingers are so...." types of attacks on liberals, conservatives, neo-cons or whatever enemy you want to slam, look elsewhere.
Lance
Yes, indeed who would have. I was disappointed by that as well, because there are legit questions to ask. I would like to know which 2 intelligence agencies reviewed his report, and if either came from outside the DoD… among other, more qualitative ones.
There are legit questions. I would have liked to hear him have to account for things more fully. I think he could have and we could have learned some things. I think this confirms my point about the purpose of all the well poisoning. They were not expressing appropriate skepticism, but merely sowing doubt. Democracy will survive Josh, but I don’t have to like it. Now it definitely falls under the slimy tag.
I agree with you on that, Lance – the anti-war side has not conducted itself well this week.
Question about casualties. Did you see Spencer Ackerman’s analysis of the AP’s and Iraq Body Count’s numbers, and how they’re at a rather stark variance with what is in those slides?
Again, it is worth considering… since I remain in favor of proper skepticism and multiple sources.
I discount the AP figures. So that is one report. The IBC data however shows exactly the trend Petraeus is talking about and they don’t even include July and August when the surge had been in the works for a while. The damn thing had just started.
I don’t judge the surge on the raw numbers anyway, but the IBC numbers support Petraeus. This was a plan that envisioned through at least April. This is September. The early returns show some promise. We’ll know more later.
You just discount it. You seem to do that a lot. Umm. Why?
No time. Short answer, those who have spent far more time on this, such as IBC, all show very different numbers. Do you believe their numbers for 2006? Most months look ridiculously low. I’ll need a good reason to look at all the various reports and then this outlier and think it is anything but inaccurate. It certainly isn’t due to bias, the numbers are way too low based on what I have seen.
So, if you have some decent reason for me to conclude that 2006 was far less bloody than I believed I’ll reconsider a lot of things, though it probably wouldn’t change my mind about staying for now.
Please back that up. Like various other claims you have made in the last 24 hours about me, I don’t see any evidence of doing that a lot. Certainly not on Iraq. You are busy discounting all positive evidence. I haven’t discounted much evidence at all, positive or negative.