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He is credited with taming the violence in Iraq, rewriting American counter-insurgency strategy and salvaging the reputation of the US military. When General David Petraeus steps down today as the commander of US forces in Iraq however, he will have little time to savour the plaudits from fellow soldiers and the Bush Administration. Instead the politically savvy paratrooper will swap the Iraqi frying pan for the Afghan fire. General Petraeus will take command of all US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia and with it the unenviable task of turning round the increasingly desperate fight faced by US...

Odierno’s Departure Max Boot Nadia Schadlow has an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal pointing out why it would be folly to move General Petraeus out of Iraq prematurely. This is a point that others, including me, have previously made, but Nadia adds an important historical dimension by noting all of the major generals, from George Washington to Creighton Abrams, who have spent years overseas directing American war efforts. By those standards, Petraeus’s deployment abroad, while lengthy and strenuous (counting a tour in the Balkans, since 2001 he has spent 50 months, or more than four years, overseas), is...

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement. He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq's escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

There should be no question what the top story of the year was: America's counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, the Democrats' hapless efforts to sabotage it, and the Western mainstream media's stubborn refusal to own up to military progress. What happened in January defined the rest of the year. We rang in 2007 with vehement liberal opposition to the "surge" of 21,000 added U.S. troops and tactical changes to secure Baghdad. In the ensuing 12 months, Democrats tried and failed repeatedly to undermine this military strategy and starve the war of funding. Their poisonously partisan allies at MoveOn.org attempted to smear...

MY Person of the Year By Rich Galen Friday, December 21, 2007 As we move into the fading days of 2007, every organization will be proclaiming their ____ of the year. The Associated Press will have its Top Ten Stories of the year. ESPN will have its Top Ten Sports Highlights. There is even a site which has the Top Ten Astronomy Photos of the year. Time Magazine used to make a big deal about its "Man of the Year." Political correctness overtook Time and they changed it to the "Person of the Year" although it is not clear to...

President Bush's surge strategy is about to be put to the test. Until now, all claims of failure or success were to be treated with caution. Too often they were theories infused with hope or pessimism - depending on one's view of the war - and political spin. Bush's gamble was that a temporary infusion of 30,000 extra troops in and around Baghdad would provide a span of relative stability that would give the Iraqis the time - and confidence - to assume far more responsibility for their own security. Supporters of the surge see cause for optimism. Violence has...

I have in this column and other places been more than a little critical of what I regard as our misadventure in Iraq. However, I find MoveOn.org’s mischaracterization of General Petraeus’ recent statement as a “betrayal” of the American people to be at best scandalous, at worst simply left-wing propaganda. Bluntly, military officers in our nation are subject to the instruction and command of legitimate civil authority. However, the General’s report was frank and, I believe, sincere — and it was his opinion, after all. I hope he was correct in many of his assessments. Especially that “Iraqi leaders are...

WASHINGTON - Democrats' momentum on their antiwar effort has stalled abruptly, ending weeks of hand-wringing by the White House. The reasons? A convincing four-star general, an activist group that overplayed its hand, and a plainspoken defense secretary who does not bother to defend the 2003 Iraq invasion. "I think it's better today," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) said of the war. "I think we're on a better path than we were." While a longtime skeptic of President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq, Alexander joined his GOP colleagues in blocking each of the Democrats' three antiwar bills this week. The third...

WASHINGTON -- Rudy Giuliani scored a hit with conservative activists by getting ahead of his Republican presidential competitors in blasting Sen. Hillary Clinton for not denouncing MoveOn.org's attack on Gen. David Petraeus. Giuliani caught the spirit of Republican rage over the left-wing MoveOn.org's full-page ad in The New York Times. On the day Petraeus presented his report on Iraq, the ad demeaned him as "General Betray Us." Giuliani asked: "Who should America listen to -- a decorated soldier's commitment to defending America, or Hillary Clinton's commitment to defending MoveOn.org? Washington-based conservatives this week voiced approval that Giuliani was hitting Clinton...

25 Democrats Voted against it and 3 Democrats didn't vote! We are pleased to announce that the Senate voted and passed the Cornyn Amendment condemning detestable attacks on General Petraeus and U.S. Armed Forces! By a vote of 72-25 (3 not-voting), the Senate passed the Cornyn Amendment that strongly condemns any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the U.S. Armed Forces. This Amendment also sends a clear message to the U.S. Armed Forces, letting them know that MoveOn.org and their liberal cohorts in the Senate do not speak for the majority of...

The ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants to convene a hearing on whether The New York Times violated campaign-finance laws when it granted a discounted rate for MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) asked committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) Tuesday to convene a hearing on the issue, saying that any rate change “for political advertising could constitute an unlawful campaign contribution.” According to media accounts, the “open rate” for the ad should have been $181,000. The liberal group said it paid $65,000. “The difference between the ‘open rate’ and the actual...

I don't think nearly enough has been made of the despicable MoveOn.org character assassination attack ad against General David Petraeus and the Democratic leadership's striking refusal to repudiate it. If you want to see the face of the modern Democratic Party, re-read that ad. The full-page New York Times ad, reportedly purchased at a radical discount, directly accused Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House," called him "a military man constantly at war with the facts," and said he "is likely to become "General Betray Us." Lest you think I'm exaggerating, consider the comments of MoveOn's executive director,...

September 15, 2007 General Petraeus' Congressman By Kieran Michael Lalor All politics are local. But sometimes, local politics are a national bellwether. Much has been said about the mendacious, full-page advertisement MoveOn.org ran in the New York Times this week referring to Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us." Democrats in Congress orchestrated the piece, and most have refused to condemn this baseless attack on a man who has devoted more than three decades to defending the people of the United States. Incredibly, even Petraeus' own Congressman refused to defend him. Let's be clear: General Petraeus was born and raised...

A White House status report on Iraq yesterday said the Iraqi government has made some progress since July on benchmarks for political reconciliation, but spotlighted continuing sectarian meddling with the military and national police by politicians. Continues...============================================================= Libbies, how's that MoveOn.org ad working? First, liberals tried complaining hysterically that the 'surge is not working', and once they figured out what month they were in (January) and that the surge hadn't started, they tried passing non-binding resolutions and failed, so then they tried imposing deadlines for withdrawal and failed, so then they tried imposing absurd new requirements on the military and...

WASHINGTON -- Reflecting on Gen. David H. Petraeus' report and surrounding carnival, it's little wonder the natives are restless -- popping off in angry ads, firing personal invectives and, as regards Congress, surpassing even the low expectations of cynics. Bubbling up from the cellars, meanwhile, is the unwelcome thought that no one is in charge. The president is deferring to the general; the general is deferring to the president; Iraqis are deferring to no one; and everybody else is running for office. Such is the state of affairs six years after America was awakened by the armed sneer of radical...

There are moments in history when everything comes together. Today is the sixth anniversary of the al Qaeda attack against the United States. This is the week Gen. David Petraeus is reporting to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. It also is the week Osama bin Laden made one of his rare video appearances. The world will not change this week, but the convergence of these strands makes it necessary to pause and take stock. To do this, we must begin at the beginning. We do not mean Sept. 11, 2001, but the moment when bin Laden...

Marrying a political attack with a fundraising gambit, Rudy has fashioned his own ad for the New York Times. He blasted it out to supporters this afternoon as part of a money solicitation and has put a portion of it on his website just above a contribution form.

Says Former Mayor's Times Attack Ad Sign Of Desperation (CBS) NEW YORK -- Ever since Rudy Giuliani aborted his race for Senate against Hillary Clinton in 2000, the political world has been hungering for a re-match between the political titans. On Friday, with both candidates running for president, we got a taste of what could be. Suddenly, it's Rudy versus Hillary all over again. Giuliani plunged head-first into a growing controversy over the activist group Moveon.org. "Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself for that," Giuliani said. The organization publicly mocked Gen. David Petraeus this week as "General Betray...

WASHINGTON — A political group supporting President Bush's Iraq war strategy with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign is airing a new TV ad denouncing a liberal group's sharp criticism of Gen. David Petraeus.The campaign is the second rollout of ads by the group, Freedom's Watch, and capitalizes on Democratic Party unease over a newspaper ad run this week by MoveOn.org, one of the leading anti-war voices among liberal activists. Click here to see the advertisement that Freedom's Watch plans to run (.pdf).The MoveOn ad appeared Monday in The New York Times on the morning of Petraeus' first appearance before Congress to...

WASHINGTON — Senator Clinton squared off yesterday with her possible challenger for the White House in 2012, General David Petraeus, and came closer than any of her colleagues to calling the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq a liar. Using blunter language than any other Democrat in the last two days, Mrs. Clinton told General Petraeus that his progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief." Referring to the charts General Petraeus brought to the House and Senate this week, Mrs. Clinton said, "Although the charts tell part of the story, I don't think they tell the...

Senator Clinton: I want to thank both of you, General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, for your long and distinguished service to our nation. Nobody believes that your jobs or the jobs of the thousands of American forces and civilian personnel in Iraq are anything but incredibly difficult. But today you are testifying about the current status of our policy in Iraq and the prospects of that policy. It is a policy that you have been ordered to implement by the president. And you have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy....

<p>THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people.</p> <p>We are now at such a moment.</p> <p>In Iraq, an ally of the United States is fighting for its survival. Terrorists and extremists who are at war with us around the world are seeking to topple Iraq’s government, dominate the region, and attack us here at home. If Iraq’s young democracy can turn back these enemies, it will mean a more hopeful Middle East and a more secure America. This ally has placed its trust in the United States. And tonight, our moral and strategic imperatives are one: We must help Iraq defeat those who threaten its future and also threaten ours.</p>

President Bush, defending an unpopular war, ordered gradual reductions in U.S. forces in Iraq on Thursday night and said, "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home." Still, Bush firmly rejected calls to end the war, saying the insurgents who threaten Iraq's future are a danger to U.S. national security. American troops must stay in the battle, Bush said, and more than 130,000 will remain after the newly ordered withdrawals are completed in July. "The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is: return on success," the president said.

It's a flip-flop that would be the envy of John Kerry on a good windsurfing day off Nantucket. For the last two days, Chris Matthews had been excoriating General David Petraeus for his reluctance to opine on the effect of the Iraq war on America's safety at home. Suddenly this morning, Matthews has decided that -- guess what? -- it's not Petraeus's job to make pronouncements of that sort. View video here. As I described here, it began on "Hardball" two nights ago, with this Matthews diatribe against Petraues for his reluctance to answer the question from Sen. John Warner...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Opposition Democrats assailed President George W. Bush's tentative plan to withdraw up to 30,000 US troops from Iraq by next July even before he announced it Thursday. Bush will make a 15-minute, televised address on Thursday night saying he could bring force levels back to where they were in December 2006 if the conditions are right. A senior aide said that the president would closely follow the strategy laid out by the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, which would end the military "surge" ordered in January. That would leave roughly 130,000 US troops in Iraq...

Libbies, how’s that MoveOn.org ad working? by JohnHuang2 First, liberals tried complaining hysterically that the ‘surge is not working’, and once they figured out what month they were in (January) and that the surge hadn’t started, they tried passing non-binding resolutions and failed, so then they tried imposing deadlines for withdrawal and failed, so then they tried imposing absurd new requirements on the military and failed. Democrat nut groups then spent $12 million this summer trying to peel Republicans away from Bush on Iraq, and failed. Bush is such a lame duck. Even Osama is upset at Democrats for...

The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. -SNIP- According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692." A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate. A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was...

Sen. Hillary Clinton yesterday found herself positioned firmly to the left of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding that disgusting New York Times/MoveOn "General Betray Us" attack on Gen. David Petraeus' integrity. That's not an enviable position for a woman who's trying to convince the American people that she's fit to be president of the United States. Further complicating her life was the position former Mayor Rudy Giuliani took yesterday on the general, the importance of victory in Iraq and . . . the truth. You couldn't ask for a more stark contrast at this stage in a possible Giuliani-Clinton presidential...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An ad criticizing the top U.S. general in Iraq raised charges on Thursday that The New York Times slashed its advertising rates for political reasons -- an accusation denied by the paper. The ad by liberal anti-war group moveon.org ran on Monday, the day of Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress about the war and how long U.S. forces will stay in Iraq. Moveon.org confirmed it paid $65,000 for the full page ad headlined "General Petraeus or General Betray Us." U.S. Army General David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, speaks to reporters...

While right-thinking people across the fruited plain cast their anger at MoveOn for its disgraceful ad placed in Monday's New York Times, "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann should be sharing the dishonor. As adroitly identified at Olbermann Watch Wednesday: "Long before the moveon [sic] ‘Betray Us' advertisement, back on August 16th, the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann began his ‘newscast' in the usual fashion, bellowing the opening spiel." Taken directly from MSNBC.com's transcript that evening (emphasis added): Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? The Petraeus report, less Petraeus, more betrayaeus (ph). The definitive assessment of the surge will...

Some people are hard to shop for, but when it comes to MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski it's going to be a breeze. Next to her name on my Chanukah list, I'm putting her down without hesitation . . . for a Roget's Thesaurus. Because when it comes to describing the performance of people across her political divide, Mika seems stuck on a solitary word: "underwhelming." As noted here, reading the news of Fred Thompson's "Tonight Show" appearance last week, Mika editorialized that "it was sort of underwhelming, but . . . it's done." At the top of today's "Morning Joe," host...

So the two men best qualified to give an honest and comprehensive account of events in Iraq have marched through Congress to say--and show--that the surge is working and America's goals are still within reach. Yet it's a sign of the U.S. political debate that their evidence of progress seemed to make the headlines in none of our leading news sources yesterday. Consider some excerpts from Mr. Crocker's testimony. The Iraqi government puts its cell phone spectrum up for auction: It nets a better-than-expected sum of nearly $4 billion. At a recent conference in Dubai, "hundreds of Iraqi businessmen met...

Has the left no remaining ounce of shame? Its latest target: the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, whom Senate Democrats unanimously confirmed. Remember Democrats faulting President Bush for being inflexible, not following the advice of the generals and having no strategy in Iraq -- never mind that they've never had so much as a paper-napkin sketch of a clue as to what to do in Iraq or the War on Terror? Yet, when he took decisive action that can fairly be said to have addressed all of these criticisms, they reflexively opposed him again, proving once...

WASHINGTON -- Before Gen. David Petraeus' report, and to give it a context of optimism, the president visited Iraq's Anbar province to underscore the success of the surge in making some hitherto anarchic areas less so. More significant, however, was the fact that the president did not visit Baghdad. This underscored the fact that the surge has failed, as measured by the president's and Petraeus' standards of success. Those who today stridently insist that the surge has succeeded also say they are especially supportive of the president, Petraeus and the military generally. But at the beginning of the surge, both...

Brit Hume cut to the heart of the matter this evening in his interview with General Patraeus. He asked, in effect, "So this is a war against Al Qaeda?" and Patraeus answered, "Yes, Al Qaeda and its affiliates". Later, Patraeus asserted that US victory in a Iraq would be a major defeat against Al Qaeda. The war in Iraq is a war against Al Qaeda. Winning there will be a major defeat for Al Qaeda. The bad news is that the vast majority of the American public do not realize this. It is not even close to realizing this. The...

It's Working? That Old Line Again? Since the war in Iraq began, the Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that their strategy "is working." And each time, it's been false. Now they're pulling out the same tired line again, but Americans know better. Do they really expect us to believe them this time? According to the Washington Times, the final Bush report that Petraeus will be presenting to the Congress next week will not be based on any written presentation by the General. In fact, it states that the only thing he will have written are his opening remarks to the...

August 20, 2007 The White House said Monday that Gen. David Petraeus likely will testify before Congress on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A spokesman for President Bush, Gordon Johndroe, reiterated that Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, would testify in open hearings. They will answer lawmakers’ questions about the situation in Iraq, the success of the troop surge and the next steps to be taken. The highly anticipated report from Petraeus and Crocker is seen as a potential turning point in America’s involvement in Iraq....

It's no wonder that sensible people just shake their heads and wonder what's wrong with the extremists of the far left when they come up with such off the wall nonsense and then try to pass it off as real political analysis. It just makes people who have even the slightest clue about what is really going on in the world double over with laughter. Such is the case with today's comedic attempt at political forecasting by nut in residence Ed Garvey of the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times. Columnist Garvey, in true nutroots fashion, thinks he has hit on the...

Petraeus was accidentally shot and nearly killed in a 1991 training exercise. The bullet just missed his heart. Physician and future Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee operated for five hours to save him.

May 01, 2007 Gen. David Petraeus recently returned from Iraq to brief the leaders of our government about the war there. Perhaps most notably, he took direct aim at the "Iraq is in a civil war" mantra of the media and Democratic leaders by stating that "80 percent to 90 percent of the suicide attacks" - the spectacular car bombings racking up the horrific fatalities - are carried out by foreign fighters who are al Qaeda members or affiliated with al Qaeda. At nearly the same time, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) sat down at an interview with Robert Novak for...