Tipsheet

Andrea Mitchell: 'Um, That Petraeus Partisan Briefing I Mentioned Wasn't So Much Partisan'

I mentioned yesterday that the left blogosphere was raising Cain over Andrea Mitchell's claim, on the Chris Matthews Show, that Gen. David Petraeus held a Republicans-only briefing to strategize over the war in Iraq.

Yeah, about that:

MATTHEWS:  What is Petraeus, General Petraeus saying over there about? What‘s he been telling people about that?

MITCHELL:  Well, it‘s a good thing you bring that out.  He‘s been telling senators—he had, in fact, a closed-circuit briefing for the senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, and he is telling them that he will report some progress, that he hopes to be able to report some progress by August.  And in turn, what many Republican senators are saying, Chris, is that if there isn‘t real progress by the end of the summer, that‘s when there are going to really break with the president, that they‘re going along with this surge out of respect for the generals.  But in his closed briefing—they went over to the Pentagon and had that briefing, Democrats as well as Republican senators, and he made it clear to them that he thinks he can report some progress.

Not exactly what she was saying earlier.

The briefing to which she referred was indeed a video conference that was Republican-only only because Democrats didn't bother to attend.