David, The First Rule Of Lying Is: NEVER BLINK!

Petraeus & Crocker get their stories straight.

General Dave says things are improving in Iraq. He's been saying that for 4 years already and one has to wonder if he's completely lost touch with reality in addition to being just another pro-war stooge for the Bush Administration. Watching him on C-SPAN, I could almost see it in his mind: "We can't leave now if we're going to attack Iran next."

Watch a video documenting Petraeus's 4 years of optimism about the status of Iraq here at firedoglake.com.

ThinkProgress.org made a handy chart which shows Petraeus's heavy-handy hawking for the surge through more than half of August.

These Washington Post articles give an altogether different persepctive, that of the Iraqi people. "According to a new poll based on face-to-face interviews between Aug 17th and 24th, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqi adults, and conducted by ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK, 7 in 10 Iraqis believe the U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad and Anbar province has made security worse in those areas and nearly half want coalition forces to leave immediately.

Poll numbers show that ordinary Iraqis are significantly more likely to say "things are going badly" than in the early days of the increased U.S. military presence in March."

"The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends."

So, who do we believe? The 2 Stooges of the Bush Administration or 2000 Iraqis, who are, inconceivably, STILL fearing for their lives and living without clean water or dependable electric service?