Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has repeatedly said that the United States must wait until September to assess the success of the President’s escalation policy in Iraq. Last month, Petraeus said it was “premature right now” to discuss the way forward in Iraq.

But yesterday on C-SPAN, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who recently returned from a trip to Iraq, suggested that those comments aren’t Petraeus’s real views. Rather, he is shilling for the administration. “I got the impression from Gen. Petraeus that he wasn’t waiting” until September to reassess the Iraq policy. “Now he might be overruled by people in the White House and, you know, wait until September. But he seemed very eager to come forward as quickly as possible with a new direction and policy.” Watch it:

The Bush administration has consistently used Petraeus as a “political prop,” as Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has noted. Bush has mentioned Petraeus “at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences.” In May, the White House used Petraeus as a PR flack to promote its war czar.

Today the Washington Post notes that some members of the military are worried that “the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. ‘The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration,’ one retired four-star officer said.”

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The New York Times reports today that “a growing number of senators from both parties are making a new push to adopt the [Iraq Study Group's] recommendations into law.” The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt claims in today’s column that “everyone agrees” on the Baker-Hamilton approach.

The middle-ground proposal, introduced by Sens. Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), has been touted as a “compromise” between the President’s stay-course-strategy and a phased redeployment.

But as Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, who formerly served as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, explains in today’s NY Daily News, the Baker-Hamilton recommendations “are now far too weak a prescription for the dire situation that faces us on the ground in Iraq”:

A cursory reading of the report might give one the impression that adopting its recommendations would result in a serious change of policy. After all, it calls for transitioning U.S. forces away from combat missions, accelerating the training of Iraqi forces and focusing more on regional diplomacy.

But look closer. While the Iraq Study Group does call for withdrawing some American troops in the spring of 2008, it conditions that withdrawal on the Iraqi government accomplishing a host of objectives.

But those are the very same benchmarks Bush is already using to measure our progress and using as a condition of withdrawal. The initial assessment report the White House released late last week makes clear that none of these benchmarks has been fully met, and on only half of these have the Iraqis made any progress.

Inexplicably, Salazar has argued that the Baker-Hamilton measure is the “right thing” because “there are people on both sides who don’t like it.”

As Korb explains though, the so-called “compromise” offered by Salazar and Alexander is toothless and does not constitute the true departure from the President’s failed policies that is needed. Instead, Congress should embrace the Levin-Reed amendment and start to “strategically reset” our presence in the Middle East.

– Ryan Powers