Gen. David Petraeus is currently making his opening statement, which relies heavily upon charts and maps displaying decreases in civilian deaths and attacks and increases in found weapons caches. Petraeus says the the “sectarian hardening” of Iraqi neighborhoods — in other words, the actual increase of ethnic separation and tensions — is only “partially responsible” for the decrease in violence.

Petraeus has also returned multiple times to “the destructive role Iran has played in funding and training militant groups.”

He ends promising to draw down troops only to pre-surge levels, and then “reassess” with no timetable. He did not mention Iraq’s refugee crisis — an estimated 4.5 million people have fled the war-torn country.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.