It was impossible not to watch some of the House's session with General Petraeus. Little else was shown on the tube, if one excludes soap operas. It was quite a show, a circus, in fact. Poor dumb politicians stumbling over themselves to fawn over this contemporary icon and Bush's confederate.

General Petraeus, gaily bedighted with row upon row of ribbons descending from the left top of his chest to his belly button, and bangles and wings and ropes hanging from other parts of his torso, became a rock star for a few hours.

It was a pathetic performance. We all knew what would happen. Military officers don't become generals by expressing their true opinions, not even by displaying competence in military skills, but by sucking up to every other officer one grade higher than themselveds. If that other "officer" happens to be the Commander in Chief, the sucking reaches monumental proportions. That is what we saw yesterday.

It is all a part of Bush's pattern of using the military itself to justify maintaining high troop levels in Iraq. He knows that the generals on the ground will strain their guts to always do what the higher rank wants. The generals know that if they fail to tell the President what he wants to hear, that they'll be out of a job before sundown.

Thus when Bush "leaves" the decisions about troop levels to the generals, he guarantees that there will be no draw down in the foreseeable future.