We've now had the first day of testimony. Gen. Petraeus made his arguments and presented his numbers. He even knocked down a few questions about how his command in Baghdad counts the civilian death count numbers. But no one asked the general why the White House and/or the Pentagon won't release the actual data, where it comes from and how it's counted.

That's extraordinary -- not only the refusal of Petraeus & Co. to release the numbers but the committee's failure to ask for them.

Don't get me wrong. I don't pretend that these statistics are the be all and end all of what we should be looking at in Iraq. They're not. Not even close. But they have taken on an outsized focus because they're the only thing the administration has seen fit to focus on. And yet we're asked to take on faith how the numbers are assembled even though there's ample evidence -- both circumstantial and direct -- that they're distorted to suit the administration's agenda.

The only reasonable course is to demand a public airing of the numbers -- to see if they hold up. So who's going to demand that?