Reply #4: I had Petraeus pegged as a member of the living dead from the start of his command

[jmowreader]

Bush has thrown just SO many generals under the wheels of his bus. It's unbelievable that any general--ESPECIALLY one as smart as Petraeus is reputed to be--would accept anything from Bush.

There is a very outside chance that, if Petraeus was promoted to theater commander right after his tour in the 101st and allowed basically free reign over there, what he wanted to do would have worked. It was working in Mosul!

Right now there's no way. The bad guys have gotten way too bad for anything we try to work.

Here's what's going to happen: in September, two months from now, General Petraeus will have to submit his report. If he's got any shred of decency left, he'll have to admit what he's doing isn't working. At that point, General Petraeus will be thrown under the bus with the rest of them.

By the time this shit's over, Multinational Forces-Iraq will be an O-4/O-5 command. No general will take the job, no colonel will want it, so Bush will have 150,000 troops under the leadership of an Infantry battalion operations officer.