Important comments from General Keane

By Greg Richards

Charlie Rose of PBS has post-Petraeus/Crocker interviews with Democratic Senator Jack Reed, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions and retired four-star general and former Vice-Chief of Staff Jack Keane. You can view General Keane's interview here by clicking on the picture of Senator Reed. General Keane is one of three commentators. In order to hear him, you have to listen to the comments of Senators Reed and Sessions, which are themselves useful. Senator Reed gives the negative case on Iraq.)

General Keane has been, in my experience, an amazingly prescient commentator on Iraq. He emerged in public view at the end of 2006 when he provided the military credibility behind Frederick Kagan's "surge" plan for Iraq. During the height of the violence in Baghdad at that time, General Keane said publicly that the situation was controllable if proper and adequate military techniques were used, which indeed turned out to be the case. It was at a meeting in the Oval Office that Mr. Kagan and General Keane convinced the president to undertake the surge.

General Keane's comments are very positive, much more positive than those of General Petraeus, whom General Keane suggests is being very conservative in depicting progress in Iraq because of the failure of past optimism. General Keane says that we are making very significant progress both politically and militarily and in many geographical areas, an important opinion given the source.