CNN's Jack Cafferty Parrots Winger Line On Dems And Iraq Report
September 8, 2007 -- 1:14 PM EST // //

Jack, don't do this. It's beneath you.

As this blog noted yesterday, The Washington Times and the winger bloggers have been bashing the heck out of Dem Congressional leaders because they describe the coming Iraq assessment as the "Bush report," rather than the "Petraeus report." But as also noted yesterday, the legislation that mandates the report explicitly states that "the President" -- you know, Bush -- is the person who ultimately prepares the report. It's the White House's work, while the commanding general only offers Congressional testimony.

Alas, the wingers have now succeeded in kicking up just enough noise to snooker a major news organization into parroting this transparent mumbo-jumbo almost verbatim. Take a look at this screen grab of CNN and Jack Cafferty:

The headline there reads:

Dems: "The Bush Report"

Dismissing Report On Iraq

And the question Cafferty poses to viewers reads:

Is it wrong for Democrats to dismiss Petraeus' progress report on Iraq before he even delivers it?

You can almost marvel at how exquisitely woven a tapestry of GOP talking points this is. Cafferty's full report, while containing a very brief allusion to the Democratic argument, basically hews to the line set forth above. He even reads the WashTimes's quotes of a GOP leader bashing Dems without letting any Dems rebut the basic charges.

What's more, the report that Dems are referring to is not "Petraeus' progress report." It is the written report that the White House will be preparing and submitting after Petraeus testifies to Congress -- again, as mandated by the legislation. To call the White House report the "Bush report" is not necessarily to "dismiss" what Petraeus says wholesale. It's merely to point out that what the White House's written report ultimately does with Petraeus' public and private testimony should be evaluated in light of who's preparing it. Nothing wrong with that.

Finally, Cafferty chastises Dems for dismissing the report "before they had any idea" what will be in it. But come on: We in fact have a very good idea what will be in the report. There have been multiple leaks to the media informing us that the report will likely rely on Petraeus' assertion that the surge is working, offering as central evidence the fact that sectarian killings are way down. These known points are exactly what Dems are disputing. So this hardly amounts to dismissing the report before Dems have "any idea" what it's going to say.

Really, these facts constitute the basics. Is a cursory awareness of them too much to expect?

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