Petraeus a Liar

The Public Editor of the New York Times^*, Clark Hoyt, just called General David H. Petraeus a liar. He was circumspect, but here is the money quote:

Stephen Biddle, a scholar at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, said Petraeus's December number was "very high" but was likely the result of "statistical noise" — the tendency of Iraq numbers to jump all over the place. Biddle was an adviser to Petraeus last spring but believes the general's testimony was "potentially misleading" because it didn't discuss all the reasons why the numbers might have improved.

He said the best way to analyze statistics from Iraq is to gather all the numbers from all sources and look for broad trends instead of picking isolated points, as Petraeus did. Biddle examined data from nine sources on Iraqi civilian deaths, including the U.S. military, independent organizations like Brookings and Iraq Body Count and four news organizations. Although the specific monthly numbers varied widely, he said they all showed declines since late 2006.

Let's be clear. The general is not a politician, or a pundit, and his testimony is given under the authority of his rank, and he purposely misled congress. The man is a liar, and a suck-up, at least that is what his boss thinks.

Petraeus used numbers that his numbers guy said were unreliable, because he's a lying sack of excrement REMF.

^*In less pretentious papers, they are called an Ombudsman.