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Josh Marshall | Petraeus Report    [

    Petraeus Likely to Testify on 9/11 Anniversary
    By Klaus Marre
    The Hill

    Monday 20 August 2007

    The White House said Monday that Gen. David Petraeus likely will testify before Congress on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    A spokesman for President Bush, Gordon Johndroe, reiterated that Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, would testify in open hearings. They will answer lawmakers' questions about the situation in Iraq, the success of the troop surge and the next steps to be taken.

    The highly anticipated report from Petraeus and Crocker is seen as a potential turning point in America's involvement in Iraq. Several Republicans, who so far have refused to side with Democratic calls for withdrawal, have said they wanted to hear from Petraeus and Crocker before making any decisions regarding U.S. troop levels.

    Democrats last week tried to make an issue of whether Petraeus and Crocker would testify in open session and attempted to paint the administration as trying to stifle such testimony. However, the White House was quick to respond that no such plans had been made.

    According to Johndroe, the fact that the pair likely will appear before Congress on Sept. 11 has nothing to do with the anniversary of the attack, but was rather dictated by Congress's tight schedule.

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    Petraeus Report
    By Josh Marshall
    TPM

    Thursday 16 August 2007

    This weekend we learned that Gen. Petraeus' Report will actually be written by the White House. Now it turns out that the White House is pushing to have the general's increasingly nominal report delivered by Condi Rice and Bob Gates, with Petraeus relegated to a "private congressional briefing."

    The Democrats on the Hill appear to be saying, No, this isn't going to be like a has-been 60s band touring under its founders name twenty years after the guy dropped out and went to live in an Ashram. We actually want to hear from Gen. Petraeus.

    And the oddest part of the article in the Post reporting this is that the authors claim, "The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush's war strategy." (emphasis added)

    Perhaps I'm missing something. But doesn't this sound like the anxiety is a little more pronounced on the White House side since they're the ones trying to bag on the report that has been the building focus of our Iraq policy for months now?