As soon as “six months” became a ridiculous cliche overused by supporters of Bush’s Iraq policy, I’d hoped we’d have a moratorium on the phrase. No one should ever be able to say, “We need six more months” in relation to the war again, without being laughed at.<\/p>\n
Too harsh? Tell you what, take a look at this timeline<\/a> ThinkProgress put together last August, and notice how many times, over many years, the White House and its allies said if they could just get six more months, we’d finally see tangible, encouraging progress in Iraq. Six months would go by, and they’d ask for another. Lather, rinse, repeat.<\/p>\n And yet, there was Gen. David Petraeus this morning, asking for — you guessed it — six months<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gen. David Petraeus, however, appeared on NBC this morning and rebutted the declarations of mission accomplished and said that he’ll need at least another Friedman Unit before he can make a judgment: <\/p>\n “We think we won’t know that we’ve reached a turning point until we’re six months past it. We have repeatedly said that there is no lights at the end of the tunnel that we’re seeing. We’re certainly not dancing in the end zone or anything like that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n