The General's Talking a Lot (But He's Not Saying Anything)

Yeah, Petraeus and Crocker went in front of Congress today. Wanna make something of it?

I'm not really sure there's much to say about it. There weren't particularly any surprises. Petraeus said that things in Iraq weren't great, but they were getting better. As Atrios points out, that's pretty much how Petraeus had to play it. No progress and Democrats and a handful of Republicans would demand that we get out. Too much progress and we can start standing down as the Iraqis stand up. No, just like Baby Bear's porridge, Petraeus had to get it juuuuust right.

He wasn't above making promises, though. Maybe, if everything goes our way, in a year we might be able to bring home the as many troops as we sent over there when the surge began. That's right, in the summer of 2008, we might bring the number of troops down to where they were at the beginning of this year. Now that's progress.

The first part of the big "September Moment of Truth" went down pretty much like I thought it would. Petraeus provided enough positive reinforcement to calm Republicans worried about reelection. He may face tougher questioning tomorrow from the Senate (you'd expect it to be the other way around, since every House member faces reelection next year and most senators do not). Senate Democrats issued a "Fact Check" of today's testimony (hat tip AMERICAblog), so they may want to challenge him on a few points. Or, more likely, they'll want to showboat. We'll know soon.