In other words, Speaker of the House and total buffoon Nancy Pelosi warns General Petraeus not to say anything good about the war in Iraq. Why? Because that would violate the Democrats' talking points that the war in Iraq is unwinnable and that the situation is terrible.

In a bizarrely worded statement, Pelosi said:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to "put a shine on recent events" in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week.

"I hope we don't hear any glorification of what happened in Basra," said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.

Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were "probably dictated from Iran."

First of all, this is war:  the whole idea is to catch the enemy off guard. The World War II allies were put off guard when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, when the Germans invaded Poland, when the British were forced out of France at Dunkirk, multiple times by Rommel, and during the Battle of the Bulge.

The Japanese were caught off guard by losing 4 fleet carriers at the battle of Midway and the Germans were caught off guard by the location of the D-Day invasion.

Does poor dumb Pelosi really think that anybody is capable of analyzing the data and saying, "2 months from now, al Sadr is going to end his ceasefire?" Our intelligence is good and has prevented many attacks and mitigated others, but it isn't perfect. The important thing is not that we were caught off guard (and I wouldn't go so far to say that) but rather how the Iraqi army and our troops responded.

Our command and our troops respondend excellently. al Sadr was handed a resounding defeat. That's what Pelosi doesn't want the American people to know.

The second bizarre, but absolutely correct, thing that Pelosi said was the terms were "probably dictated from Iran." This is astonishing since it was a little more than a year ago that Pelosi pushed through a House Resolution that condemned the Iraq surge and warned Bush not to involve Iran.

If al Sadr is being dictated to by Iran, then why shouldn't we punish Iran?

Pelosi wants to make this another show trial where the Democrats get to beat up General Petraeus and have it covered by their buddies in the mainstream media to fool the America people that we are losing in Iraq. The Democrats' strategy for the war on terror is to declare defeat, run away, and hope that we're not attacked again -- at least not soon enough that they can't blame it on Bush.

Sometimes a cartoon says it best of all.