King of Snark

John Cole is at the top of his game in this post about Petraeus's upcoming "assessment provided by testimony":

In case you wanted to fact check Petraeus’s report to Bush, compare it to his testimony before Congress, or do a comparison between what Petraeus tells Bush and what the White House writes, forget about it:

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. “There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony,” the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus’ opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

Meanwhile, at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb writes:

The Dems are already in full retreat over the war in Iraq, having failed completely to peel off enough Republicans to pass a date-certain for withdrawal and having already voted to fund the war. As news of progress mounted this summer, there were numerous attempts to puncture Petraeus’s credibility—but if the Democratic leadership has now decided they must separate the man from the report, then they clearly view those efforts as a failure.

But that still leaves one question unanswered: Do the Democrats believe that Petraeus will be saying whatever the administration wants him to say—that he will essentially be lying to the U.S. Congress? If that’s what they believe, why dance around it? They ought to just come out and call the general a liar—or another of the countless victims of the BushCheney war machine.

Got it? The guy who spent hundreds of hours crawling up Scott Beauchamp’s ass to find out whether or not he actually saw someone run over a dog in a Bradley thinks it is silly for you to be able to fact check the General leading our war efforts in Iraq.

Check out John's 11-point prediction for how the testimony will go -- but empty your bladder first. (There are actually 12 points, but the last one is not a prediction; it's already happened. And it's not funny.)