Amongst all the commentary on the Petraeus report on the situation in Iraq, and the apparent transferral of authorship from Petraeus to the White House I didn't see many people question that Petraeus would be a good person to write the report. The focus on how the White House was taking over set up the dichotomy that a report authored by Petraeus would have been some kind of independent assessment on the United States involvement in Iraq. It could not possibly have been.
Petraeus might be a fine, upstanding individual but no-one should be asked to write their own school report. It just doesn't work. With the best will in the world people rationalize their own situations and behavior. Yet the media proclaimed until the middle of August that an independent report would be delivered by a man with a long history of probity and independence. Petraeus himself had a good reputation, but it was only layered on top of an excessive deference in America to the views of the professional military.
It was for the best that the Petraeus report became a partisan political report, because the biases were seen.
Posted by eroberts at September 13, 2007 9:53 PM