(HOST) As the Surge Report deadline approaches, commentator Bill Seamans finds himself thinking as much about the messenger as he is about the message.
(SEAMANS) The New York Times Op-Ed page asks whether we are in for what it called another Snow Job in the Desert. It poses a question by progressive columnist Paul Krugman who asks whether General David Petraeus is being set up by President Bush as another Colin Powell – that is, will the critics of the Petraeus report due next week charge that he has cherry picked the truth in Iraq and start calling him Colin Petraeus.
It’s suggested that the Petraeus parallel with Powell is a remarkable echo. Petraeus has now, as did Powell, a virtually impeccable reputation as a sophisticated realist regarding the convergence of military and political thinking. We the people can recall how Powell was cast by the Bush administration as the teller in the UN of the allegedly true story, with pictures, about Iraq’s chemical weapons of mass destruction – an expose which turned out to be an intelligence fabrication foisted on Powell to the detriment of his reputation.
It’s said that President Bush is now betting on Petraeus to, in effect, play the Colin Powell role and declare that the surge is succeeding. Krugman maintains that it is not and he has some impressive support despite President Bush’s snapshot visit to Iraq this week where he declared his surge is working. The Government Accountability Office reported last week that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for progress mandated by Congress. Among other things, the G-A-O said that the Iraqi parliament, which is just returning from a month-long vacation, has failed to enact, among other things, constitutional reform, fair distribution of oil profits, and to effectively use the Iraqi army to reduce violence in Baghdad.
Add to that a recent National Intelligence Estimate – a report by our sixteen different spy organizations – which noted that violence in Iraq remains high, that terrorists still mount formidable attacks, and that the country’s leaders remain unable to govern effectively. Meanwhile, so far this year, the number of American dead and wounded each month has been higher than in the same month last year. Thus we can see that General Petraeus will have a difficult time reporting surge progress as he sees it.
Meantime, some detractors say that Petraeus is so identified with the surge – that if it fails, he fails. And will they ask whether Petraeus is much more of a political and partisan general than the news media commentators have reported. I expect that after
the Petraeus estimate comes out and President Bush tells us what his further strategy is for Iraq – that General Petraeus, himself, will emerge as a significant and perhaps even political part of the story as did Colin Powell after his UN speech.
Bill Seamans is a former correspondent and bureau chief for A-B-C News in the Middle East.