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GOP Rep. Walsh to call for Iraq withdrawal.
The editorial blog of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle is reporting that Rep. Jim Walsh (R-NY), a moderate Republican, “is switching gears and is now calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.” Additionally, “Walsh, who visited Iraq during the weekend, says he will no longer support funding the war.” The paper’s Washington correspondent, Erin [...]

Brit Hume’s exclusive one hour interview
with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker proved Fox News to be an even friendlier forum than expected. Hume opened the interview by asking Petraeus to give a “synopsis” of his testimony before the House today. Petraeus then proceeded on an uninterrupted 16 minute soliloquy, turning the Fox News “interview” into a powerpoint presentation [...]

FACT CHECK: Petraeus To Withdraw Troops Next Summer Because Of Broken Military, Not ‘Progress’
In today’s hearing, Gen. David Petraeus suggested that he will withdrawal 30,000 troops from Iraq next summer, citing that “security gains” and future progress due to the escalation have allowed the move:Based on all this and on the further progress we believe we can achieve over the next few months, I believe that we will [...]

Conyers blasts DoJ for ’selectively’ providing U.S. attorney documents.
In July, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting documents from U.S. Attorney’s offices that participated in prosecutions with political overtones. The Department has refused to turn over most of the documents. Now, Conyers and his colleagues want Gonzales to explain why DoJ [...]

REPORT: Petraeus Spent At Least 17 Days In August Flacking For Bushs Escalation
The Washington Post reported this weekend that the White House political office and Gen. David Petraeus’ unit have been “hard-wired” together, working jointly to “map out ways of selling the surge.”The White House has used Petraeus as a PR flack over and over again to sustain its failing Iraq strategy. Last month, Petraeus kicked [...]

Deadline arrives for missing White House emails.
Today marks a key deadline set by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the White House to “turn over a report first requested three months ago about the White House’s problems with lost e-mail,” which was “generated by the still-unknown private contractor who claims to have ‘lost’ those 5 million White House e-mails.”

Petraeus Falsely Claims That Six Months Ago, ‘No One Would Have Forecast’ Anbar’s Success
Today in his testimony to the House, Gen. David Petraeus cited the reduced violence in the Anbar province as evidence that President Bush’s “surge” is working. He added that it would be “premature” to withdraw U.S. troops now, because in January, “no one would have dared to forecast that Anbar Province would have been transformed [...]

Petraeus hearing underway.
Gen. David Petraeus is testifying today before 107 members of Congress all at once. It is a joint hearing of the House Armed Services Committee and the House International Relations Committee. All the members will be allowed five minutes to question him. The testimony is being carried live by all three cable networks, and his [...]

O’Hanlon pushes Iraq line in right wing press tour.
This morning, Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon published a column on National Review Online pre-emptively defending Gen. David Petraeus’ testimony to Congress about Iraq. He followed it up with an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s conservative radio show. As Matthew Yglesias points out, O’Hanlon appears to now be casting “himself out of the broad left-of-center community in [...]

Rumsfeld: Afghanistan Has ‘Been A Big Success!’
In a new interview with GQ, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld makes it clear that he’s not ready to discuss any of his “regrets.” “I mean you’d always wish things were perfect, but they never are,” he states. One area where he has no regrets is on the war in Afghanistan:“Look at Afghanistan. In [...]

Washington Times’ McCaslin Gives Platform For Hillary Clinton Death Wish
Last week, in his Inside the Beltway column, the Washington Times’ John McCaslin printed an anecdote about former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe’s son, Jack. In the story, the youngster accidentally runs into then-First Lady Hillary Clinton with a golf cart at Camp David, causing his father to joke, “What a career wrecker, [...]

Poll: Nearly 70 Percent Of Iraqis Say Escalation ‘Has Worsened’ Their Lives
In June, outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace argued that U.S. success in Iraq “is not about levels of violence” but that “it’s about progress … in the minds of the Iraqi people“:What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think [...]

Job as Bush’s press secretary: a fate worse than death?
In Robert Draper’s new book Dead Certain, he writes that chief of staff Josh Bolten’s first choice to replace Scott McClellan as press secretary was Donald Rumsfeld’s former spokeswoman in the Pentagon, Torie Clarke. Clarke informed Bolten that she would “rather commit suicide” than take McClellan’s job. Bolten’s second choice, Tony Snow, was given the [...]

Petraeus Report: Crisis In Confidence.
The National Security Network interviewed top national security experts, including former Bush administration counterterrorism analysts Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, to get their perspective on Petraeus’ testimony. “It’s going to be written by the White House. It’s going to be edited by the White House,” Clarke says of Petraeus’ “report.” Beers adds, “I think it’s [...]

ThinkFast: September 10, 2007
“President Bush is expected to name an attorney general soon - perhaps this week. The five finalists: Michael Mukasey, Theodore B. (Ted) Olson, Laurence H. Silberman, George J. Terwilliger and Larry D. Thompson.” Olson appears to be emerging as the frontrunner.60 percent: Americans who say we “should set a timetable to withdraw forces ‘and stick [...]