Michael Petrelis gets the story on Cheney continuing to get away with expensive, taxpayer funded trips to Iraq that take up significant time of the military to stage and accommodate, only to offer up the same kind of useless summary judgments ("impressions", "significant progress"), dodging benchmarks, when what we have needed for well over a year are some systematic measures of advance/retreat in Iraq.
What maybe Mike doesn't report is the hypocrisy that exists in asking the Iraqi Government to meet benchmarks, when Rumsfeld was never really asked to do the same for almost three years, backed up by the GOP rubber-stamp senators.
I didn't read the transcript, but here's my question:
"Amicus, Bloggermedia, Bootstrapping AS, good afternoon gentlemen.
General Petreaus, the justification for the plus-up was that we needed to 'hold' areas in the clear-hold-build strategy. What percentage of key areas and what percentage of the overall country is now being adequately 'held' versus where it was three, four, and six months ago? What percentage is being held by Iraqi forces alone? Thank you."
My follow-up is: "What is the percentage increase in the top-tier readiness of the ISF, as measured by the US military?"
What maybe Mike doesn't report is the hypocrisy that exists in asking the Iraqi Government to meet benchmarks, when Rumsfeld was never really asked to do the same for almost three years, backed up by the GOP rubber-stamp senators.
I didn't read the transcript, but here's my question:
"Amicus, Bloggermedia, Bootstrapping AS, good afternoon gentlemen.
General Petreaus, the justification for the plus-up was that we needed to 'hold' areas in the clear-hold-build strategy. What percentage of key areas and what percentage of the overall country is now being adequately 'held' versus where it was three, four, and six months ago? What percentage is being held by Iraqi forces alone? Thank you."
My follow-up is: "What is the percentage increase in the top-tier readiness of the ISF, as measured by the US military?"
