Victory is on order.

AMERICAblog:

An incredibly disturbing story from ABC News. Basically, General Petraeus has already decided that the surge in Iraq will be such a resounding success come September that we're going to keep the surge troops there another four months beyond when we were told they were needed. Did you get that? The mission is such a success that it's going to take twice as long. Now that's a man who knows how to spin.

But it's even better than that. We been told forever that it would just impossible to tell if the surge is working until September or even later because, you know, the surge troops wouldn't even all be in Iraq until July. Now, per ABC, Petraeus is telling people he already knows what he's going to report in September - that the surge has been a huge success. Which is a bit odd, since the last of the surge troops only just arrived in Iraq a day or two ago (yeah, they lied about July). Yet now we suddenly already know how successful we'll by September even though we were told that September would likely be too early to tell. It's all one big joke for Petraeus and Bush. Not to mention, I love that Petraeus and Bush basically misled the entire Congress last week. Congress just gave him $100 billion for Iraq based on the latest, best briefings on what was going on. Unless Petraeus told Congress last week that he already had determined that the surge would be a success in September, he misled them. He held back information that they needed to know in order to properly fund this war.

Oh but it gets better. Petraeus is already making plan to keep a sizable number of troops in Iraq for another five to ten years. And he says he wants us to "draw down" the number of troops to 130,000 by the end of 2008. Draw down? You mean, get us back to the number of troops we had in Iraq before this summer's surge. Some draw down.

So basically, Petraeus and Bush are not planning on doing squat with Iraq until after the presidential election. Isn't that convenient for the Republican presidential and congressional candidates. I'm sure it's just a coincidence - it's not like Petraeus would be actively scheming on how to throw a US election.

I'm sure this will work just as well as Bush declaring MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.