Why should The Report Formerly Known As Petraeus be allowed to frame this entire September debate? It's written by the White House, with "input" from General Petraeus and many others, and we all know what will come out. We've known since spring.
It's the GAO report that matters, and live today is a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on it. But, even here on the Great Orange Mothership, no attention to the hearing. Anyone want to make a bet that won't be the case for Petraeus's testimony next week? This hearing is going on at 2 PM and will be covered live on C-Span 3 (how much you wanna bet Petraeus is on C-Span1 at the very least).
UPDATE: The report is out, and the headline conclusion: for all the surge, violence against Iraqi civilians is UNCHANGED. ThinkProgress also reports that the Iraqi government met 3 benchmarks, "partially met" 4 (White House pressure obvious there), and failed all other 11.