Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t believe Petraeus if he doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear

Watch and listen:

Transcript (emphasis added):

BASH: You talked several times about General Petraeus. You know that he is here in town. He was at the White House today, sitting with the president in the Oval Office and the president said that he wants to make it clear that Washington should not be telling him, General Petraeus, a commander on the ground in Iraq, what to do, particularly, the president was talking about Democrats in Congress.

He also said that General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?

REID: No, I don’t believe him, because it’s not happening.

Jeff Goldstein on Reid’s comments and the reactions from other Democrats to them (emphasis his):

It is telling that Reid’s fellow Democrats are reacting quickly to his gaffe, not because they don’t wish to see us lose the war— after all, many of them have staked their political future on just that—but rather, because they desperately don’t want to be seen as wishing us to lose. So they are forced to straddle the issue, agitating for legislation that will hamstring the military, offering propaganda victories to our enemies, and providing constant “dissent” that weakens troop morale and emboldens terrorism by giving the impression that the tactic is useful should its practitioners hope to divide a population—all while pretending to care about the troops and wring their hands over the possibility of a loss that they are working actively to help bring about.

Reid’s sin, from the Democratic Party’s perspective, is that he gave voice to the very kind of surrender rhetoric that has long cost Democrats the trust of the American people on issues of national security. Or, to put it another way, Reid’s blunder was one of candor—when what the Democratic party is about these days is keeping up appearances.

Bob Owens looks at the reactions of Iraq war veterans to Reid’s suggestion that the ‘war is lost.’

You’ve stepped in it big time, Senator Surrender.