20071220 My vote for person of the year: David Petraeus

My vote for person of the year David Petraeus

The annual naming of a person of the year is usually the stuff of a good conversation at a holiday party – otherwise, I tend to not get wrapped around the axle about it all.

However, cruising the web the other day, I came across this post on the Vets for Freedom website: href="http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/news/blogitem.aspx?id=145">Man Of The Year: David Petraeus.

I could not agree more…

Man Of The Year: David Petraeus

Vets for Freedom: 12/14/2007 8:07:17 PM

http://www.vetsforfreedom.org/news/blogitem.aspx?id=145

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Time magazine hasn’t announced its pick for “man of the year” yet, but we certainly know ours: Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq and architect of the surge strategy that is turning the tide in the war.

Petraeus formulated a brilliant counterinsurgency plan. He executed it with care and diligence. And when much of the country didn’t want to notice the security gains that the surge had wrought, he took the national media spotlight to defend his strategy and his honor. In all this, he was nothing less than masterly.

When Petraeus testified on Capitol Hill in early September, much of the media and the Left simply refused to believe that violence in Iraq was down.

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And the day Petraeus’s testimony began, MoveOn.org ran its infamous “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” ad. It said that “every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed”; that Petraeus “is constantly at war with the facts”; and that the general “is cooking the books for the White House.”

Throughout his testimony, Petraeus continued to suffer slanders from members of Congress who cared about politics more than truth.

Hillary Rodham Clinton stopped just short of calling him a liar, saying that to believe his report required “a willing suspension of disbelief.”

Less than a month later, however, Petraeus’s critics had been effectively silenced. To its great credit, The Washington Post acknowledged this in a blistering editorial:

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Read the entire post here: Man Of The Year: David Petraeus