In light of the Petraeus/Crocker show, some pithy, summary statements.

Eugene Robinson: "That noise you heard yesterday on Capitol Hill was the can being kicked further down the road leading to January 2009, when George W. Bush gets to hand off his Iraq fiasco to somebody else. It's clear by now that playing for time is the real White House strategy for Iraq. Everything else is tactical maneuver and rhetorical legerdemain -- nothing up my sleeve -- with which the administration is buying time, roughly in six-month increments."

What admirable, gutty leadership from The Decider. As he admitted in the book "Dead Certain," he can't wait to ditch these headaches of his design and retreat to his ranch.

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum commented on the latest poll figures in Iraq concerning the surge. The results are less than hopeful. In fact, Drum simply writes, "the surge can't work if this is how the Iraqi public views the U.S. presence."

But Petraeus/Crocker insist it's working, so we must believe.