Via the Corner, this email from an unidentified reporter for the Hill:
The Democratic leaders are laying it on thick. I was at a press conference this afternoon with Reid, Schumer, Durbin and Murray. They referred to the Petraeus Report as the "Bush Report" about a half-dozen times. Reid even went so far as to correct a reporter when she called it the Petraeus Report. "You mean the Bush Report don't you?" he said.
They must really want the report to come across in the press as administration hackwork rather than an honest assessment of the situation in Iraq.
The Dems are already in full retreat over the war in Iraq, having failed completely to peel off enough Republicans to pass a date-certain for withdrawal and having already voted to fund the war. As news of progress mounted this summer, there were numerous attempts to puncture Petraeus's credibility--but if the Democratic leadership has now decided they must separate the man from the report, then they clearly view those efforts as a failure.
But that still leaves one question unanswered: Do the Democrats believe that Petraeus will be saying whatever the administration wants him to say--that he will essentially be lying to the U.S. Congress? If that's what they believe, why dance around it? They ought to just come out and call the general a liar--or another of the countless victims of the BushCheney war machine.
