Dear Dairy:

I’m delighted by General Petraeus’s testimony before Congress today. I know people are suspicious that he is merely a heavily-medalled ventriloquist dummy for my Administration, saying what we scripted for him, but the truth is it’s just a coincidence that he’s saying exactly what we fervently hoped he would and nothing we found at all displeasing. Can’t people just respect the uniform and credit the man with cooking the books and cherry-picking the facts all on his own?

The best news to come out of the testimony is that if all goes perfectly and nothing unforeseen happens, we can draw down troop levels to pre-surge numbers by July of 2008---that is, if everything goes absolutely perfectly, we can be exactly where we were a year ago! Hooray! Glory days of 2006 in Iraq, here we come! (hopefully!)

I’m going to find out if Gen. Petraeus is available to write a report on my Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, so he can explain to everyone how misunderstood our flawless response to that "disaster" was!

Someone just got a leg up on writing an account of my Administration for the History books!
GWB