Well, Betrayus and Crock o'shit wrapped up Day One's testimony! I did relish Sen. Biden's parting remark to P&C, at the closing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; "Your physical stamina is greater than your good judgement!" That, in a nutshell, sums up the utter cow paddies they left all over the Senate Hearing Rooms' floors. All three prez candidates asked questions. Obama asked the best Q's, with Hill doing an admirable job on asking about the Secret Agreement.

CLINTON: Do you anticipate that the Iraqi government would submit such an agreement to the Iraqi Parliament for ratification?

CROCKER: The Iraqi government has indicated it will bring the agreement to the Council of Representatives. At this point, it is not clear, at least to me, whether that will be for a formal vote or whether they will repeat the process they used in November with the Declaration of Principles in which it was simply read to the members of the Parliament.

CLINTON: Does the administration plan to submit this agreement to our Congress?

CROCKER: At this point, senator, we do not anticipate the agreements will have within them any elements would require the advice and consent procedure. We intend to negotiate this as an executive agreement.

Sigh, McCain still can't seem to get it right...

MCCAIN: Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?

PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.

MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites overall?

PETREAUS: No.

MCCAIN: Or Sunnis or anybody else.

As a Mccain spokesman said later; "He merely stumbled." How many 'stumbles' has it been to date? Five, six...? Repeat after me: AQI is Sunni, AQI is Sunni...

Personally, I think the worst opening statement and suck up honors have to go to Sen Lieberman:

You've been very frank about some of the problems that we still face. I say -- what I'm about to say with respect to my colleagues who have consistently opposed our presence in Iraq, as I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there's a kind of "hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq" and most of all "speak of no progress in Iraq." The fact is there has been progress in Iraq, thanks to extraordinary effort by the two of you and all those who serve under you on our behalf. I wish we could come to a point where we could have an agreement on the facts that you are presenting to us, the charts you've shown, the military progress, the extraordinary drop in ethnosectarian violence, the drop in civilian deaths, the drop in American deaths, the -- the very impressive political progress in Iraq since last September. Hey, let's be honest about this. The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has. So we've got to give some credit for that.

Here's the pdf file of the Dog and Pony Show that was distributed to our Congress Critters.

Here's a brief synopsis of Obama's statement and Q's:

"If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there's not huge outbreaks of violence, there's still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it's not a threat to its neighbors and it's not an al-Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe," he said.

Obama said Bush's troop increase reduce the violence, but the "breathing room" it created has not been used effectively as rivals jockey for political power in Basra. Obama argued that the best way to resolve the political situation is by withdrawing troops in a measured way that increases pressure on both sides.

He also said any future steps should include U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran. "I do not believe we're going to be able to stabilize the position without them," he said.

"I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder (and) that the two problems (of withdrawing troops) that you've pointed out _ al-Qaida in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region _ are a direct result of that original decision," Obama told Petraeus and Crocker.

When I can obtain the transcript, I'll do a more extensive post and see who asked any of the 14 questions that the USIP had recommended, from my ISG post!