Black Box Report

ghost•writ•er (gôst' rî'tər) n. One who writes for and gives credit of authorship to another.

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

It's been one of the worst kept secrets in DC, that no matter what the situation in Iraq looked like come September, Gen. Petraeus was going to report signs of "progress." His reputation, not to mention the goodwill of his Commander in Chief, practically demanded it. Now it's a sure thing:

These people have no shame. The "big" report coming this September, the one Bush has been telling us we should wait for before making any decisions about what to do next in Iraq. Well, the White House is writing the frigging report...

So rather than have the general do his own evaluation of his own progress - which is suspect enough, I mean, what is he going to say, "fire me"? - Bush is now writing Petraeus' report to Bush.

Gen. David Petraeus must be feeling something like this right about now:

The poor guy was just trying to be a good Bush soldier, loyally throwing himself (or allowing himself to be thrown) onto the grenade of the Iraq disaster in order to protect Bush, with nothing but his reputation as his body armor. And it's not like Petraeus doesn't know how to put lipstick on a pig. He's been doing a bang-up job of that himself, and no one has questioned his credibility.

But the White House isn't willing to leave anything to chance, so they thought the good General could use a little help. From even deeper in the depths of the LA Times article:

The senior administration official said the process had created "uncomfortable positions" for the White House because of debates over what constitutes "satisfactory progress."

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq's oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, 'Well, we can claim progress,' " the administration official said. "There were others who said: 'Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it's not credible to . . . just neglect the fact that it's had no effect on the ground.' "

And with one good "snip", Petraeus finds his reputation neutered.

(Side note: Who are these maverick "White House officials" who dare to call this "disingenuous?" They certainly won't be lasting very long...)

Petraeus may not need a ghost writer, but he's got one anyway - or several. And with Bush and Cheney getting final script approval, we can get a pretty good idea what the "report" will look like. Call it a hunch, I think Bush will like what he sees:

So the White House will lie in the report it writes under Petraeus' byline, then "interpret" it on its own to justify anything it wants.

Let me predict the future:

The report: "Success!"
The interpretation: "Smashing success!"

Even conservative blogger James Joyner at Outside the Beltway calls this utterly tone deaf:

I didn't expect the report to be an objective view of the situation totally divorced from politics. But I did figure they'd at least take reasonable steps to at least present that illusion.

Doing it this way is so mindnumbingly stupid as to defy measurement.

Now, if Joyner had just left it at that, I'd have given him a little gold star next to his name and moved on. But then he had to go and follow it up with this (emphasis mine):

The whole point of the September report was to 1) freeze the political debate until a set point in the future and 2) present the views of trusted experts on the ground that, while there remains a lot of work to be done, there is real progress being made and therefore 3) we need more time. If this is just the White House’s view of the situation, the first two advantages are rendered moot.

No.

The whole point of the September report was to give an honest assessment of the situation in Iraq - both military and political - devoid of any domestic political influence. If you commission a report to reflect a predetermined scenario, that's not a "report," it's "propaganda." WMD's, aluminium centrifuges, Mohammed Atta in Prague, Iraq's involvement in 9/11...we've seen this administration handle intelligence data the way a circus clown handles a balloon animal. Douglas "dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet" Feith owes his career to the White House's cherry-picking skills.

But what about some of the other revelations, before the White House spin gets applied? Like Petraeus' prediction of a "pullback," that some troops may be drawn down and redeployed from areas in which they've seen success. The Influence Peddler doesn't need the White House, he provides his own spin:

That's the sort of dramatic move that might force some Americans to re-think what they thought they knew about our 'failure' in Iraq. If it happens, and the Iraqi forces can keep the peace, it would mark an unmistakable 'turning-the-corner' moment.

These are the people for whom "pull my finger" was invented.

As anyone who's been semi-conscious for the last three years could tell you, we've turned that corner about 42 times before:

Now, pardon me for armchair quarterbacking here, but isn’t this what we did last time? Go into an area, secure it, hand it over to Iraqi forces and then watch as it went downhill and descended back into chaos?

Yeah, you think I’m just being critical for no reason, but read this...

Petraeus has not told the White House where he might recommend reductions. But military commanders have indicated in recent briefings that Nineveh province in northern Iraq and its capital, Mosul, like Al Anbar in the west, could be an area from which it might be suitable for the U.S. to withdraw.

Okay...they said Mosul. That’s in Northern Iraq.

Well, yesterday hundreds were killed or seriously injured by the biggest suicide bombing attack yet in Iraq right outside of…you guessed it...Mosul.

Come to think of it, Bush - even with Cheney's help - might not be quite up to the task of all the hard work of ghost writing this report. They don't even have the confidence to let Petraeus and Crocker testify publically before Congress - despite the law mandating a public hearing - and are suggesting a private congressional briefing instead.

They may need to bring in the Ghost Writer back-up team.