Telling

Exchange between Petraeus and Warner:

""He [Warner] then asked Petraeus a pointed question: "Do you feel that [Iraq war] is making America safer"?


Petraeus paused before responding. He then said: "I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

That was, of course, a non-answer. And Warner wasn't going to let the general dodge the bullet. He repeated the question: "Does the [Iraq war] make America safer?"

Petraeus replied, "I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind.""

My take? I think Petraeus has gotten a bad rap this last couple of weeks, especially with the farther left questioning his loyalty to the country, a charge that's both unwarranted and counterproductive. However his obstinate adherence to misleading statistics, his appearance on Fox News, and his robotic and ideological abstractions of the Iraq conflict lead me to believe that he's more interested in somehow figuring out a military solution as a academic exercise than looking at the problem in terms of the bigger picture of America and terrorism. Is he yet another talking head of the Bush administration? To me the court is still out on that, but that's really irrelevant anyway. We had more than enough info to decide to pull out before Petraeus delivered his report, and his presentation isn't convincing enough to change our minds. Maybe if he'd held up a vial of anthrax...oh, mah bad.