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“It seems like Democratic leaders in Congress are trapped in a time warp,” the Tribune editorial commented. “They said a year ago the surge was doomed to fail. They were wrong, yet even in light of recent military success, they still demand the president set a timetable for troop withdrawal. They’re still trying to enshrine that into law.”
Commenting on the surge in June, the same editorial page saw signs of success and signs of failure and concluded that “what can be said without hesitation is that U.S. forces are stretched thin and the Iraqi army has yet to prove it is an effective fighting force.” In September, the Tribune observed that General David Petraeus had sounded a lot more upbeat about military progress than ambassador Ryan Crocker sounded about political progress when they both spoke to Congress. “Neither man predicated his diagnosis of progress on the Iraqi government’s achievement of the benchmarks Washington has set,” that editorial went on. “That’s because the Iraqis aren’t meeting them.”
