The Democrats' response was a necessary consequence of a mistaken conclusion they reached several months ago. Early this year, they decided that the war in Iraq was hopelessly lost. Not unreasonably, they felt entitled to wrap the defeat around President Bush's neck and benefit by the political consequences. Sen. Reid ratified this conclusion by stating, in just so many words, that "the war is lost."
That was all very well as long as reports from the battlefield remained uniformly negative. But, beginning with the "surge," the military outlook unexpectedly (at least to the Democrats) began to improve. It was plain that Gen. Petraeus would say exactly that when he reported to Congress, and that put the Democrats in a very tight spot indeed. They resolved it in the only way they could: by blackguarding Gen. Petraeus. Their position, therefore, remains today what it was before, and has at least the merit of consistency: The war in Iraq is irretrievably lost, and any evidence to the contrary, let alone any inconvenient statements by military experts, will simply be denounced as false.
Most Congressional Democrats haven't even been willing to condemn MoveOn.org for its filthy ad. The best Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois could do was concede that it had been "a poor choice of words." What an exquisite sense of taste he has!