Petraeus is back on Capital Hill today, testifying in front of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. This time around has been quite a bit quieter than the last, though there are still plenty of nutter butters to go around.

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then–as it would be to repeat the charge now.

By undercutting the widespread support for getting out of Iraq, Petraeus did indeed betray the American public, siding with an enormously unpopular president who wants to stay the course in Iraq for personal and political reasons that run contrary to genuine national security interests. Once again, the president is passing the buck to the uniformed military to justify continuing a ludicrous imperial adventure, and the good general has dutifully performed.

(via Jawa) There’s some good analysis of the Petraeus charts over at The Belmont Club.

A few observations about this Chart are in order. First, it is a strategy designed against the AQI; to explicitly cut it off from Syria. It makes no claims about its effectiveness against the Shi’ite milita threat in the South whose wellsprings are in Iran. Secondly, it makes no claims to generality. What the chart illustrates is the way to take down the AQI in Iraq.

But imagine for a moment you were the national security adviser of Barack Obama asking yourself what the Anaconda chart implied about the global strategy against terrorism. We find that “engagement” or diplomacy has a place in Petraeus’ strategy. (It is in the 12 o’clock position of the chart). So far so good. But what to do about “information operations”, “kinetics”, “intelligence” and “religious engagement”? In other words, where does one fit in activities like spying on the enemy, misleading them, debating them, killing them, building indigenous forces against them and criticizing — where necessary — their religion? How feasible is it to do this from Kuwait — where all forces are to be withdrawn at the rate of one or two brigades per month? And how popular will such activities be with the Democratic base?

Do you think Obama will ever be grilled on his almost impressively poor stated Iraq strategy? No, but it’s good to understand the truly disastrous implications of his proposals.

Jules Crittenden at Forward Movement passes along some info on Iran’s connections to Al Qaeda and the southern “insurgency”. 

Salah Al-Din accused Al-Qaeda of being subservient to Iran, [claiming] that they had [extensive] evidence to that effect. He said: ‘We found Iranian [currency], toman, at an Al-Qaeda headquarters that we uncovered. We have also captured Iranian weapons, not to mention audio and video recordings containing announcements by Al-Qaeda fighters that they had received training in Iranian military camps and that Al-Qaeda wounded were being transported to Iran for medical treatment.’

Salah Al-Din claimed that Al-Qaeda’s real commander [in Iraq] was Abu Ayub Al-Masri, and that [Abu ‘Omar] Al-Baghdadi [2] was an Iraqi figure to whom many [words and deeds] are attributed solely to create the impression that [Al-Qaeda is a genuinely] Iraqi organization. He said that [Abu Ayub] Al-Masri had been rescued from arrest by an Arab intelligence apparatus using a diplomatic vehicle belonging to the Iranian Embassy… Salah Al-Din explained that as of late, Al-Qaeda in Iraq had considerably diminished in size – so much so that today it can be said to constitute 15 percent of what it was a year ago, [and that therefore, even] if Al-Qaeda has begun launching suicide operations, these [operations] are not proof of its strength…’

[In conclusion,] Salah Al-Din stated, in the name of Hamas-Iraq: ‘The U.S. is our main enemy, but a more dangerous enemy is Iran. The U.S. wants [our] oil, and possibly it wants to establish military bases [on our soil], or to remain [in Iraq] for many years to come – while Iran wants to rule, [and] to eradicate and change [our] beliefs and ideas, [and] aspires to alter the demography of the Sunni regions, particularly Baghdad.

Note that during yesterday’s Petraeus’ testimony, it was made clear that Iranian influences are among the largest long-term problems to Iraqi stability.

Hot Air has more on that interesting little Al Qaeda chestnut as well.

This will come as a shock to those who keep believing that Shi’ites and Sunnis cannot cooperate in terrorist activities. Of course, the intelligence and military communities already know that Iran funds AQI as well as the Mahdi Army, mostly to destabilize the elected government of Iraq. They want a theocracy headed by their puppet Moqtada al-Sadr, but they’ll settle for a failed state they can control through violence and collapse.

Imagine how much denial this will get. Democrats can’t even admit that Al Qaeda is in Iraq, how will they react to claims that Al Qaeda is working with Iran (who Obama believes we should engage diplomatically, presumedly with fresh-baked cookies and teen gossip)?

Tags: Abu Ayub Al-Masri, al qaeda, AQI, capital hill, Democrats, Iran, Iraq, Iraq war, petraeus, Petraeus Testimony, Republicans, Salah Al-Din

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 9:26 AM and is filed under Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Nutter Butters, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.