Top Intel Analyst Says Surge Is Failing, Kristol Counters It’s Going ‘Better Than Anyone Expected’

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/12/fingar-v-kristol/

Top Intel Analyst Says Surge Is Failing, Kristol Counters It’s Going ‘Better Than Anyone Expected’

Yesterday, Thomas Fingar, the top intelligence analyst in the Office of the National Intelligence Director, stated that “the most optimistic” assessment of the increase in troop numbers in Iraq is that it has not had a “significant” effect in reducing the violence:

The surge that began a few months ago is having an effect, it has not yet had a sufficient effect on the violence, in my judgment, to move the country to a place that the serious obstacles to reconciliation can be overcome.

The most optimistic projection is that it will be difficult and time-consuming to bridge the political gulf when violence levels are reduced, and they have not yet been reduced significantly.

This morning on Fox and Friends, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol ignored the intelligence assessment, instead offering his unfounded view that the “military situation is better than anyone expected”:

The truth is if you look concretely on the ground in Iraq, the military situation is better than anyone expected. Better than David Petraeus expected. Better than those of us here at home who supported the surge expected six months ago. … And we’re going to win the war. I think we’re going to win this war if we just don’t lose our nerve here at home.

Watch a compilation at link~

Kristol concluded that if Bush can hold off Congress, “I think Gen. David Petraeus could go down in American history with an amazing performance. … This could be a Ulysses S. Grant situation where Bush finally found the right general.”

Let him move himself and the Standard home office staff to Baghdad. In Green Zone, even. And stay there for the next few years.

As long as he's talking out of his ass, lets see him put his ass where his mouth is.

What a PNAC-ing ass Kristol is. Totally irrelevant bushbot.

This is certainly news to me. I guess Kristol never heard about General Lee.

He's ALWAYS wrong. Really. He's been dead wrong from the beginning. He's the neo-con who so infamously pined for "our own Pearl Harbor" in order to colonize the Middle East. He then fanned the "weapons of mass destruction" flames. (still does). And he trumpets the non-existent link between the 9-11 terrorists and Hussein.
He was totally in synch w/Rummey on the initial "shock and awe" as well as the subsequent invasion and occupation.
The man is consistent: wrong all the time.

He is paid to put the lipstick on the pig.

Recalling from the posts around here at the time, people were expecting a lot worse. I certainly did.

Perfectly wrong, I should say.

No matter what happens with the escalation, we will wind up pulling out, we will in the end have no say about the government of Iraq, and we may or may not retain control of Iraq's oil - and whether we do or not, the oil companies will still profit there.

So, no matter what happens, they will blame the congress and the Democrats, and use that game to hang onto power.

He is most certainly willing to fight to the last drop of someone else's blood.

yea, could be some sick truth in that, they are making insane amounts of money on death and destruction all in the name of oil.