The slogan of the cut-and-runners used to be "listen to the generals". Now the NY Times is shouting the exact opposite -- Ignore Petraeus and the generals in Iraq who are saying there is progress.

We hope that General Petraeus can resist the political pressure and provide an unvarnished assessment of the military situation in Iraq. He is an important source of information, of course, but he is only one source — and he is not the man who sets American policy. If Mr. Bush insists on listening only to those who agree with him, Congress and the public must weigh General Petraeus’s report against all data, including two new independent evaluations sharply at odds with the Pentagon’s claim that things in Iraq are substantially better.

In other words, we want Congress to listen to those who are not on the ground in Iraq rather than those who are.

Oh, and by the way, I love this little jab at the President.

Mr. Bush, deeply unpopular with the American people, is counting on the general to restore credibility to his discredited Iraq policy.

Let's see here -- what are the polls saying about the views of the American people towards Congress? Somewhere around 18% approve of the job being done by Congress, which is about half of the president's job approval rating. On the other hand, General Petraeus has an approval rating nearly 4 times higher than that of Congress. So perhaps it is time the anti-war, anti-troop Democrats listen to someone who the American people do believe is doing a good job.