A Rude Awakening: Petraeus assessment debunks McCain-Palin's victory cries

According to John McCain and Sarah Palin, the surge in Iraq is working; except that it's not. Palin hyped the battle cry -- "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight!" -- in her acceptance speech and continues to use it on the campaign trail. She even went so far as to say Obama wants to "forfeit" the war and criticized him for not using the word "victory" when referring to Iraq. Of course, McCain pounds home the message whenever he's near a microphone. "My friends, the surge is working, the surge is working".

McCain-Palin might have gotten a rude awakening this weekend when U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, made a realistic assessment of the situation. Petraeus, set to leave Iraq this week to take up his new post as head of Central Command, said the situation there remains "fragile", recent security gains are "not irreversible" and "this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade... it's not a war with a simple slogan."

Doesn't sound like a victory speech to me.

The ill-formed logic McCain and Palin are peddling is that the surge is working because violence was reduced when more troops where sent to keep the peace. McCain has claimed the surge “began the Anbar awakening“, a period of reduced violence, when it began many months before Bush even announced his “surge” policy. (The "Awakening" resulted when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia).

As McCain-Palin continue to try to delude the public into thinking McCain's surge is even remotely 'victorious', hopefully military leaders like Petraeus won't be shy about setting the record straight.