The Petraeus Report

A lot of people are highly anticipating General Petraeus' progress report this week in front of Congress. This is interesting because though Petraeus staunchly supports the war and is dedicated to it's "success" (still not sure what exactly defines success here), he is known for his candid delivery. This is a double edged sword for the Republicans. On the one hand, public outing of the lack of progress surrounding the surge will expose the president and the administration. Especially after he's been trying to convince us that it is working. However, they need Petraeus to come clean because even the Republicans in this country are getting tired of the lies. It's good news for the Democrats, too, because it will give them more to exploit.

Evidently, this isn't enough for Senator Dick Durbin (from cnn.com)

Days before Petraeus is scheduled to testify on the progress of the troop surge, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat is accusing the administration of manipulating information in its highly anticipated Iraq report.

"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 told a Washington think tank.

Durbin, a war critic, said for a long period of time, he has e-mailed 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.