Gen. Petraeus’ comments to the media after the classified briefing to senators in the Crypt in the U.S. Capitol appear much more truthful than those of our previous Iraq commanders. Though he does emphasize the positive more than the negative, I think it is important that he’s telling the American people — and Congress — specific areas needing improvement in Iraq.

[W]e are actually ahead of where I wanted to be in some areas and probably behind where we might have hoped to be in some other areas. We are ahead, I think, with respect, as I mentioned, to the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad. Progress in Anbar is almost something that’s breathtaking. We have made huge inroads. I think that you just saw an announcement — the killing of the security emir of al Qaeda Iraq in eastern Anbar province, the detention of the Qazali network. This is the secret cells of the Shi’a extremist network. I’m not sure whether we’ve announced it, but we picked up the Shavani (ph) network head in Iraq. That’s the explosively formed projectile element inside Iraq that gets from the other in Iran the explosively formed projectiles. We have learned a great deal more about Iranian involvement, very nefarious involvement involving funding, training on Iranian soil, advice and the provision of, again, lots of arms and ammunition, including these explosively formed projectiles that have been so lethal against some of our armored vehicles.

In some other areas, we obviously have work to do, and that is, obviously, in the area of the car bomb networks. Although we did police-up the Resafah car bomb network in eastern Baghdad, one that was responsible for killing 650 Iraqis in a two and a half month period prior to their detention, and have picked up a number of others and a number of network leaders and other important participants in al Qaeda Iraq. Clearly, we have additional work to be done to make inroads into those who are carrying out these horrific suicide bombing attacks against all Iraqis.

Gen. Petraeus also uses the term “surge” correctly — referring to the increase in the number of troops in-country; not the COIN strategy he’s implemented (shown by the establishment of Joint Security Stations (JSS) — Operation Law & Order, no less — throughout Baghdad and elsewhere.

I — what I tried to do is to give an accurate depiction of the situation in Iraq — a forthright assessment. It’s an assessment that therefore includes areas in which there’s been progress. As I mentioned, for example, the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad — a very important development. And again, remember we’re in very early days on this. We’re only about two months into the surge. We won’t have all the forces on the ground until mid-June and I pointed that out to them, and noted that Ambassador Crocker and I would be doing an assessment in early September and provide that to our respective bosses at that time. That’s something we agreed when Secretary Gates was out there.

The Christian Science Monitor has more good coverage.

I hear Ma Ferguson (go to bottom of page) is frozen in the Texas Capitol Crypt deep underground — even farther than E2.