Reply #1: Gen Petraeus-News Hour-McCain bolsters Iraq Economy!!!

[kirby]

He was claiming that things really were safe. I lost all respect for him after that interview last night. I dont think Marine Jim Lehrer was buying it.

Here is the transcript (as well as video)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june07/petraeus_04-04.html

Funniest Excerpt about McCain:
And it may be as much as a kilometer, almost a mile long, so this is an enormous market, as I said, tens of thousands of Iraqis in it.
He was not protected by a cocoon of security. Yep, there was security there, but he was out --
actually he helped the Iraqi economy quite a bit, bought a number of carpets, in fact. And he haggled with the merchants himself,
with an interpreter, and was moving all around very freely.

Another Disingenuous Excerpt:

JIM LEHRER: But as you know, the reports describe that situation slightly differently. They say there were armed
helicopters overhead. There were armed Humvees all around. There were more than 100 armed U.S. troops around,
protecting Senator McCain and the congressional delegation, that this was hardly a routine visit to a market. So which is it?

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Well, there was considerable security, as I said, Jim, around it. Actually,
there's security when I go down there, as well.

But having said that, I mean, a suicide vest bomber could have walked up to him just as easily as they could have walked up to me.
We were not, you know, surrounding him, again, with some kind of cocoon of soldiers. He moved around freely.

We have helicopters usually flying when I'm actually out in the markets, as well, I mean, sometimes whether you know it or not,
because, as I mentioned, no one wants to lose, you know, some high-ranking guy on their watch.

Again, having said that, there are snipers that are always possible. There are others who are possible in these marketplaces. Y
ou cannot control that kind of activity. And, again, I thought, you know, it was a fairly routine stop out there, in terms of just
sort of strolling through a market, albeit with, you know, squads of guys out there in that marketplace.

But they are fairly heavily patrolled markets anyway, with Iraqi -- these markets are always controlled during the time that they're in
operation to prevent vehicles, in fact, from moving through the access barriers when those markets are open. They're only allowed to move
vehicles in and out, when the markets are shut, to deliver goods. And then they're excluded.