I know, I know, it's not the Petraeus Report; it's the White House report with a soupcon of Petraeus. Fine. But my point is this: even if it really were the Petraeus report, so what?
We all know - the country knows - the degree to which all federal departments, including the DoJ, NASA, FEMA, the EPA, and even the Peace Corps, have been assiduously refashioned into political departments of the Republican Party. What makes us think that the DoD is any different, whether in its civilian or its military personnel?
We know the extent to which anyone in DoD, including high-profile generals, who demurred from the Bush party line was fired or took "early retirement," just as those who wouldn't play dirty pool at DoJ were fired. So just as in the case of the DoJ, we now have to ask in the case of the DoD not only about those who were fired but about those who remained, of whom, for now, Gen. Petraeus is the most preeminent. We need to be clear that Gen. Petraeus is still around not just because he's a dedicated military professional but also because he has stuck with the Bush agenda. He has not pissed off the loyal Bushies. The only question is whether, in this administration, he could have survived for as long as he has without pissing it off without also being a loyal Bushy. Let us at least recognize that for Gen. Petraeus not to be a loyal Bushy and yet to survive at high levels in this administration would make him an exception to the rule. He may be, but the odds are against it.
I mean, hell, we all already know what the report is going to say. The report is going to be anticlimactic because we already know that it is going to be completely consonant with the loyal Bushy viewpoint. This is already the conventional wisdom not just here on Daily Kos but in the traditional media as well. In fact, the traditional media have demonstrably taken it as their mission to promote the loyal Bushy viewpoint in advance of the report, apparently to drown out the cynicism about it that was created when we learned that we were not just going to hear the unvarnished truth from a general on the ground. So there is nothing to wait for as far as the report is concerned. The only thing to wait for is the response of the Democratic Party. Will they grow a spine or won't they? That is the ony question to be answered this September.