Durbin: Civilian employees working on Bush-Petraeus report were told, "We need a positive report."

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: September 7, 2007
Durbin: Iraq report 'manipulated'

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Days before Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress on the progress of the troop "surge" in Iraq, the Senate's number two Democrat is accusing the administration of manipulating information in its highly anticipated Iraq report that will be released next week.

"By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said at a Washington think tank.

Durbin, a war critic, said that for a long period of time he has exchanged e-mail with civilian employees who were gathering data for the report and writing draft portions of the findings.

"Some of them I correspond with almost on a daily basis. And when they sent a discouraging report about things that were happening in Baghdad, they were reminded by their superiors that's unacceptable; we need a positive report. They were sent back for editing changes. Now that's a fact," Durbin said....

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/09/07/durbin-iraq-report-manipulated/#more-1819

[Hydra]

1. K&R

Raise your hand if you're surprised!

[daninthemoon]

2. Gettin real impressed with Dick Durbin. GO GO GO

[Spazito]

3. A repeat of the behavior that got the US into the invasion of Iraq

in the first place. Same shit, different day, sadly.

[robinlynne]

4. And this needs to be all over the news.

[spanone]

5. k&r

[Bjorn Against]

6. Petreaus was the general who told the press they had found biological weapons labs in Iraq

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer reported in 2003 that...

The U.S. military has found a second trailer in Iraq that could have been a mobile bio-weapons lab. the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Major General David Petraeus, confirmed that today.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/07/19/petraeus/

And the guy who told us they found WMDs is the guy we are supposed to trust when he testifies before Congress. What a joke, Petreaus is a liar just like the rest of the neo-cons. This report is not to be trusted.

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Thanks for adding this info, MN. nt

[spanone]

7. swift kick

[orleans]

8. yeah, yeah, yeah, but now what's he gonna do? what are all the dems

going to do? hand over another $50 billion???

(i'm just getting so damn fucking cynical about all this it's really sad)

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. We know they've been selective about the data they present to the press,

reaching one wrong conclusion after the other, and the sons of bitches are still doing it. Is this crazy or what?