Accusing Petraeus – # 2

As to the question of "who will be the first major Democrat to say that General Petraeus has thrown away his integrity and said what he knows is not true because he was told to do so by the Bush Administration?", it appears, not surprisingly that Dick Durbin is right there. On Thursday The Washington Times reported that Durbin was calling Petraeus’s report "the Bush report" and saying it could not be trusted.

According to this morning’s Los Angeles Times, "Durbin said he did not want to question Petraeus' integrity: ‘I respect him very much.’" However, Durbin also said that "[b]y 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." In other words, while Senator Durbin claims he respects General Petraeus, he also says General Petraeus is "manipulating the statistics" to give a misleading report.

Come on, Senator Durbin. You can’t have it both ways. If you say General Petraeus is "manipulating the statistics," you can’t claim you aren’t questioning his integrity.