On Iraq, straight-shooter David Petraeus told it like it was:

I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.

The institutions that oversee them are being re-established from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward…

[T]here are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment has begun flowing. Since July 1, for example, more than 39,000 weapons and 22 million rounds of ammunition have been delivered to Iraqi forces…

Considerable progress is also being made in the reconstruction and refurbishing of infrastructure for Iraq’s security forces. Some $1 billion in construction to support this effort has been completed or is underway

One teensy problem. That was in 2004.

When the then lieutenant general Petraeus talked up the war for The Washington Post, the “tangible progress” he identified came from the old plan (remember “as-Iraqis-stand-up-we-stand-down”?). Since then, the weapons have been lost, the reconstruction money (handed out so cavalierly that officials from the former CPA used to play football with plastic-wrapped bricks of $100 notes) stolen, and the Iraqi forces revealed as sectarian goon squads.

Oh, and thousands upon thousands of people have died.

Today Petraeus still sees “progress” – even as he spruiks for an entirely different strategy predicated on the failure of the last one he recommended.

“General Petraeus knows what he is doing,” says The Australian.

Well, that’s probably true.

As Glenn Greenwald documents, Petraeus has regurgitated the administration’s contradictory talking points since the invasion began. A straightforward careerist, he would happily find “reasons for optimism” during a surge to the moon, so long as Operation Lunar Freedom advanced his own fortunes. Right now, he’s signed up for the Bush administration’s last scheme: basically, to keep troops in Iraq as long as possible before handing the whole mess over to a new president.

The current springtime-for-Bush-and-Baghdad chorus is largely bogus, contradicted in whole or in part by reports from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service and the National Intelligence Estimate.

Here’s the McClatchy newspaper group reporting from the ground:

Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbours. Services haven’t improved across most of the capital — the international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003 — and tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month in search of safety.

Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and political leaders continue to intervene in their activities.

Civilian deaths haven’t decreased in any significant way across the country, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim.

While General Westmoreland – sorry, Petraeus – touts his surge for the mouth breathers on Fox, the real news comes from the BBC, where a new poll shows the majority of Iraqis (and a staggering 93% of Sunnis) say attacks on the coalition troops are justified. The same survey reveals “a growing consensus among respondents that coalition troops should leave the country immediately.”

If there’s a consensus that you’re not wanted in someone else’s country – if the majority of the people there want to kill you – you’ve only got two choices.

You can dismiss the natives as ignorant savages and reassert your right to impose yourself by force. The model then becomes the Palestinian Occupied Territories, through which a variety of Israeli versions of Petraeus have been surging for years.

On the other hand, if you take seriously your own rhetoric about democracy and self-determination, you dump the generals and move to a strategy requiring only three simple words. Get. Out. Now.