[mburbank]

I'm not sure if I think Patraeus is a shil or not.

And if it was his staff writting the report, I'd be fine.

But I got out of the article that the White House staff would be writing it. While this is usually done through whitehouse placed cronies, there is a pretty solid track record at this point of reports being written as purely political documents. I'd like to think if the report generally referred to by his surname said things Patraeus violently disagreed with, he'd say so, but I'd be a lot more sure if the report was being written by people working directly under him, NOT people working directly under W.

It also makes the whole "Lets wait for the Patraeus report in September" even more hollow, since sort of "I'm going to wait until I hear what I have to say in September before I make any decisions about what to do in after that."