AND PETRAEUS GOETH. Ezra's post titled "Petraeus Cometh" noted the obvious problems in this game about how to define the Iraq casualty figures so that the surge will look like working: the Iraqis will not make the same kind of fine-tuning when observing and experiencing violence in their own lives, and it is their experience which will finally determine whether the surge works or not. But the game of playing with the necessary information over here goes on. Think Progress reports that there might now be no written Petraeus report for general consumption, and reminds us that initially we were supposed to get such a report, but that later it was the White House who was going to write it. Now the report itself has become something only a few will read. This sounds in some ways very much like the shifting justifications for the Iraq war in the first place. It also sounds like a fairy tale I read as a child: Mouse as the Cat's Tailor, translated for your amusement here. --J. Goodrich.
