In answer to my post below perhaps General Petraeus is not guaranteed to stick to the script.

Gen. David H. Petraeus looked out from a Black Hawk helicopter at the vistas of Baghdad rushing by 150 feet below on a recent summer evening, pointing at bustling markets, amusement parks and soccer fields scattered through neighborhoods where miles of concrete barriers stood like sentinels against the threat of suicide bombers.

Pressing the talk button on his headset, the slightly built, 54-year-old general, the top American commander in Iraq, said glimpses of the normal life that have survived the war’s horrors have helped to boost his own flagging spirits, especially on days when signs of battlefront progress are offset by new bombings with mass casualties, the starkest measure of continuing insurgent power across Iraq.


Then, he said ruefully, he wondered whether he “should have taken that civilian job” before accepting what many see as the most unpromising command since that of Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr. in Vietnam — who took charge, in 1968, when that war was going badly and American opinion was running strongly in favor of a pullout.

Over here on the left I think that most of us just naturally assume that Petraeus is a lock to tell us just what the Bush administration wants us to believe.

But I for one have wondered how he can come across as credible when almost all of the other information that comes out of Iraq is negative. I mean we have heard that the surge has calmed some areas, but with the next news article we learn that other areas have ignited with violence. It is simply an ongoing game of "Whack-a-mole".

But imagine if Petraeus really is the man of integrity that the administration has tried to sell him as. And imagine if sat there before the Senate, or Congress, and decided "Fuck it, I am going to tell the truth".

If that unlikely scenario were to occur I would want there to a camera focused on George Bush's and Dick Cheney's face. Their reaction would serve as my screen saver for years to come.