NBC re-cap of Petraeus testimony

General Petraeus is likely to encounter tougher questioning today as he testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, because of the large number of presidential candidates sitting there. John McCain, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden (who chairs Foreign Relations and always has a lot to say about everything) will speak to the General.

NBC News recaps yesterday's testimony:

The Washington Post: “Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told Congress yesterday that the deployment of 30,000 more troops to Iraq has made enough progress that the additional combat forces can be pulled out by next summer, but he cautioned against ‘rushing to failure’ with a larger and speedier withdrawal… [T]he general's report and troop proposal opened a new phase in the fractious Washington debate over the future of the U.S. venture in Iraq nearly 4 1/2 years after Bush ordered an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. From this point on, the argument will no longer be about whether to withdraw U.S. troops but about how many to pull out and how quickly.”

EJ Dionne writes, that before Petraeus “began his account of the 'substantial' progress brought about by the troop increase in Iraq, congressional critics of President Bush's policy had come to the depressing conclusion that the surge has done what the administration needed it to do. It has not won the war. It has not achieved reconciliation at the national level in Iraq. But it has bought more political time in Washington, bringing Bush closer than ever to reaching one of his main objectives: keeping large numbers of troops in Iraq beyond Election Day 2008.”