Petraeus testimony at odds with facts on the ground

General David Petraeus called the achievements of the US "surge" in Iraq "fragile and reversible" and claimed that Iran now posed the greatest long-term threat to achieving stability in the country and the region. The US commander in Iraq told two Senate committees–including the three presidential candidates vying to become his next commander-in-chief–that the addition of 30,000 US troops last year "has achieved progress, but that progress is reversible." He called for what appears to be an open-ended halt this July to the withdrawal of any US forces. In testimony that singled out Tehran as a malevolent force that was arming militant factions in Iraq, he said: "The situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain." Later he added: "We haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel." Without providing evidence, the top two US officials in Iraq -- Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker -- accused Iran, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah of fueling recent fighting in Baghdad, saying Tehran and Damascus were pursuing a "Lebanization strategy" in Iraq. "The hand of Iran was very clear in recent weeks," Petraeus said. Iran denies US charges that it is stoking violence in Iraq and instead blames the bloodshed on the presence of 160,000 US troops. But Petraeus told lawmakers that Iran's Quds Force and Hezbollah were funding, training, arming and directing Shiite groups he blamed for recent deadly rocket and mortar attacks in the Iraqi capital. Petraeus, however neglected to mention that the attacks were in fact made in retaliation to unprovoked, joint-US-Iraqi military assaults against Moqtada al-Sadr's militias who had in fact been maintaining a cease-fire widely credited for a reduction in violence in the past six months. Petraeus also did not mention that rather than instigate the recent violence in Iraq, it was Iran's Quds Force themselves who had brokered this past week's truce between Sadr's militias and the US-Iraqi forces "a truce which was immediately shattered by more US-Iraqi army attacks on Sadr's Mahdi Army. Petraeus appeared on Capitol Hill after the deaths of 11 US military personnel in Iraq in the previous 48 hours–and the recent milestone of 4,000 American dead–and at a time when a significant majority of Americans believe that the war was a mistake. Several protesters were ejected during his testimony. One protester stood up with a banner saying, "There's no military solution." No more than three more combat brigades are expected to be pulled out of Iraq before George Bush leaves office next January, leaving more than 100,000 troops in the country when the next US president is sworn in.