Shakesville: Petraeus-a-Go-Go

Greetings Shakers! This is Petulant from Petulant Rumblings. Melissa, the all-knowing Queen Cunt, asked me to post some of the video from General Petraeus' hearing today. I just received a DVD of Liberace—Behind the Music, a campy made for TV movie starring Victor Garber as Liberace and I am fighting every urge to watch it so that I can post video of General Petraeus' first remarks, so y'all should be proud that I chose Petraeus over Liberace. That is probably a big ole mistake but "I am proud to be a GAY Amuuuuurican."

Video is a messy business and I have finally finished processing Petraeus' opening statement at today's joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

I am not offering much analysis of General David Petraeus' testimony as Democracy Arsenal are doing an amazing job of pointing out his fallacies and live-blogging the entire hearing. The General's opening statement is in three parts and he has lots of fancy charts to tell Congress that TEH SURGE is working with only a few setbacks. Iraqi civilian deaths are still a problem, but not as bad. I guess that depends on how you count the numbers. From Democracy Arsenal:

There were significant revisions to the way the Pentagon’s reports measure sectarian violence between its March 2007 report and its June 2007 report. The original data for the five months before the surge began (September 2006 through January 2007) indicated approximately 5,500 sectarian killings. In the revised data in the June 2007 report, those numbers had been adjusted to roughly 7,400 killings – a 35% increase. These discrepancies have the impact of making the sectarian violence appear significantly worse during the fall and winter of 2006 before the President’s “surge” began. [DOD, 11/2006. 3/2007. 6/2007]

Here is part one of General Petraeus' Opening Statement. CNN has a partial transcript of his remarks.