Petraeus and the Surge.

[SirNitram]

Alright, these two juxtapositioned against each other demonstrate that, once again, we're not looking at war for completion of objectives, just war for political fodder.

Link

The senior U.S. commanders in Iraq -- Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno and Gen. David Petraeus -- want the surge to continue until at least December and expect to report enough progress in Iraq by September to justify it, officials told ABC News' Martha Raddatz.

I'm kinda iffy on declaring it's going to have succeeded in September, when it's June, but perhaps he just has seen really good results from the Surge so far?

Apparently, no. Transcript from CBS:

LOGAN: General Petraeus acknowledged the last few months here have been deadly, with U.S. casualties soaring. Fifteen died just this past weekend. That will be one of the issues he faces when he testifies on the progress of the surge in September.

[LOGAN CLIP]: Is there anything you see so far that would indicate you would recommend a withdrawal?

[PETRAEUS CLIP]: We haven’t started the surge — the full surge — yet. So let me have a few months. I’ll answer that in September.

So, it's not started yet, but he's already decided it's working so well it needs to continue and not implement another strategy.

[Stormbringer]

It's no surpise that "the surge" is largely unproductive. Even at the time the majority of experts were saying that with out an Iraqi military and security force to consolidate gains after the surge, it was at best temporary progress.

As for Petraues's remarks, they're a wonderful political non-answer.