D'oh

In his second day of testimony, Bush/Cheney's figleaf general, Petraeus, made the most revealing admission of all, perhaps a faux pas, perhaps a Freudian slip:

In the hearings' most stunning moment so far, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) asked Gen. Petraeus if success in the Iraq war will make America safer. His response -- by far the most surprising moment of the hearings -- was a blunt "I don't know." This is the first time that any general officer, let alone the commanding general in Iraq, has ever equivocated on whether success in Iraq will contribute to U.S. security.

Did Petraeus inadvertently reveal this truth because it's a question that has never been properly answered, free of Rovian spin?

Isn't there something inadvertently refreshing about his admission of inconclusivity?

While Petraeus, revealing himself as much a politician as any Bush official who's every appeared before Congress, worked hard to backtrack when given the opportunity, the damage had been done. The resultant feeling from Petraeus' slipping out the truth, here on the sixth (that's right) anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is one of intense sadness, the waste of it all:

MATTHEWS: But if the commander over there can’t justify the deaths of these soldiers, because it serves a national purpose and makes us safer then what the hell are we doing there?

BIDEN: …This is…this is heartwrenching. They refer to every one of those bodies as a fallen angel. They put six fallen angels on that aircraft. And you know, Chris, um…what do you say? Why did they fall? What do you say? What do you say to their parents? What do you say to those, those troops?

It's worth noting that Sen. Biden (D-DE) has a son in the Delaware National Guard who's due to be deployed to Iraq next year.

So this is what 9/11 has come to: America debating the corpse of a wrongly launched and ineptly prosecuted war of deception and arrogance that the greediest and most corrupt figures in our country's recent leadership have seemingly locked up into, one that a solid majority of us want us to exit.

Happy anniversary.