Senators from both sides of the aisle unimpressed with Petraeus report.

Frustrated senators called on Gen David Petraeus and the ambassador, Ryan Crocker, to take off their "rosy glasses" after they reported that the troop surge in Iraq had been successful.

After a relatively smooth ride before two House of Representatives committees on Monday, the visitors from Baghdad faced the full wrath of senators from both parties who want US forces brought home immediately.

Into the mix was thrown the 2008 White House campaign as several candidates took the opportunity to lambast the soldier and the diplomat for what they viewed as an excessively optimistic picture of events in Iraq.

Mr Obama, who unlike his rival Hillary Clinton opposed the war even before the 2003 invasion, was among the most withering in his response to Gen Petraeus's verdict that the surge of an extra 30,000 troops was working and force levels should not be brought down to 130,000 until next year.

"We have now set the bar so low that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation, to the point where now we just have the levels of intolerable violence that existed in June of 2006, is considered success," he said. "And it's not.

This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake."

I kept hearing that Petraeus was going to make it impossible for the anti-war Democrats to try and pass legislation to bring the war to a close because he was going to show tangible signs of progress that would cow them into submission.

I certainly did not hear anything that would preclude any kind of request for a clearer plan to bring our troops home and end the war, did you?