Is it? I thought stuff like that fell under the the scope of the White House and more specifically a combo of the State and Defense department sercetaries. Isn't this why you have generals in different theaters? Should Patreaus have an opinion on how Afghanistan as well?
It's a completely legitimate question. Allegedly, our military mission in Iraq is having the effect of decreasing capabilities of AQI, which at least implicitly is said to increase our safety from AQ attack. That's the White House line and if fighting AQI is part of the General's mission, then he should be able to connect the dots: especially since Petraeus has not been shy about promoting our anecdotal victories in Anbar. This question gets to the heart of what's the mission, and what would victory look like. When he says the surge is working, I'd like to know what he means in terms of American security. Besides, his boss is the Commander-in-Chief. He's testifying to Congress. He should know the political goals and whether they are being achieved, including safety of Americans at home and abroad.
Who knows. You would likely have to go back to Vietnam to come close to any sort of ********ed up policy and where there is such deep distrust of anything coming out of the whitehouse. These are legitimate questions to ask as this is information that congress needs to do their job. If he doesn't have answers then, "I don't know" is legit as well.
I asked a general once if he wished Air Cav was really still the regular cavalry with horses. He said he liked horses but he would not have liked to have been wounded back in the old pre-sulfa days.
Boy, you said it! Richie was all hole, no gopher. All wax, no wick. All Bob, no Enzyte. Richie was so deep in the closet his breath smelled like mothballs. And my wife would kick his ass so hard he'd be shitting New Balance until the Mayan calendar rollover. Oh, and he spelled like he had just chugged a liter of retard juice.
You're right, it's not his job. To digress back a few years, one of the things Grant had over Lee was the ability to think outside his job and to make decisions based on that. You are correct in saying that answering these questions are not the job of the Generals, but now would be a good time to have a General that could. Of course, probably the reason we don't is because we don't have the right President. The reason we got Grant is because Lincoln wanted him. If I were you, I wouldn't think of Warner's question being about Petraeus. It's really about George W. Bush. I think Warner knows this.