Bayh, a potential vice presidential nominee, said he did not want to get "sucked into the presidential campaigns," but went on to ask Petraeus to give the American people a general idea of when troop withdrawals can begin.
"Is it just impossible to offer any rough estimate?" Bayh asked, in the four-and-a-half-hour hearing's final volley.
Petraeus, as he did earlier, staunchly demurred. He said it was "flat-out not responsible to try to put down a stake in the ground" and estimate when troops could begin leaving Iraq.
Petraeus and Crocker have no problems projecting out the potential implications of leaving Iraq - but they refuse to make projections of what staying will look like. That double standard is absurd. Is there a strategic plan for our presence in Iraq? If so what? The answer is pretty clearly no. They have no end game. There is no exit strategy. The Bush/McCain/Petraeus/Crocker plan is simply to stay and to stay a very very long time in the hopes that things slowly get better.
Petraeus won't even firmly assert that our presence in Iraq is making us safer, though he basically says he thinks it is. I've heard from a bunch of military folks that he has to believe his strategy is working, that it's just leadership to be optimistic and can-do. But Petraeus isn't being optimistic, he's just waffling and avoiding questions. It's dangerous that Petraeus has put himself in a political role while in uniform.
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