It’s 9:13 PM. If you have a chance, flip on Fox News at least for a moment. It’s Gen. Petraeus’s (and Crocker’s) one hour “exclusive” with Brit Hume on Fox. The chyron actually reads “A Briefing for America.” And that’s really pretty much what it is. It’s another briefing. It’s not an interview. It’s a continuation of today’s bamboozlement but in prime time on Fox with the expected soft-ball questions and credulous analysis.

Late Update: The “exclusive” is also helpfully interspersed with commercials from the White House-organized pro-Iraq War astroturf group Freedom’s Watch.

Later Update: As around 9:45, Hume is walking Petraeus toward explaining how the Iraq War is really a “war against al Qaeda.” Petraeus is playing along.

Here t’is …

There’s been a lot of attention to that poll that showed that the great majority of Iraqis (70%) believe that the surge has failed and that security conditions have deteriorated. But there’s a lot more in that poll that’s worth looking at. (Click here for the full results.)

Matt Yglesias notes one key number. “Nearly 60%” of Iraqis see attacks on US troops as justified. As Matt notes, even a substantial minority who believe that would make a successful outcome very difficult, perhaps impossible.

Another number jumped out even more to me though. Over here in the US we all seem to have agreed that it’s best that Iraq be reorganized as a decentralized state made up of three quasi-autonomous provinces — Kurds, Sunnis and Shia. But the Iraqis themselves don’t seem to agree. 62% believe Iraq should remain a centralized state with its capital in Baghdad.

So Iraqi nationalism is alive and well. They all agree. They just haven’t decided who’s going to dominate the centralized state — Sunnis or Shia.

Indeed, this probably understates the problem since I suspect that the Kurds (many of whom don’t really want to be part of Iraq at all) strongly favor the decentralized option.

In fairness that number was 79% in 2004. So it’s come down substantially. But this is the sort of thing fuels civil wars for years. The Lebanese civil war was an example. Both sides keep fighting until they decide they can’t ever really beat the other side. Then there’s some kind of settlement. The Iraqis don’t seem anywhere near there.

If you need a quick take on the Petraeus/Crocker interview tonight on Fox News, you catch this clip in which Brit Hume helps Petraeus explain how the Iraq War is really “more than anything else a War with al Qaeda.”

It seems like the Romney campaign has had its fill of impersonating law enforcement officers and is on to poorly concealed phony websites.

Earlier today a new site went online — phoneyfred.org. Only it took a reporter at the Post, it seems, a few minutes to figure out it was a production of the Romney campaign. And specifically the work of Romney consultant Warren Tompkins, who you may remember as the guy President Bush hired to axe John McCain back in the South Carolina primary back in 2000.

The thing is with these dirtball sites you either do them publicly — the party committees do them all the time — or you conceal your role. One or the other, not a mix of the two. But being that this is the Romney campaign they apparently couldn’t get even that right.

Earlier I noted one key detail of the BBC/ABCNews poll of Iraqis: By a substantial majority (62%), they want Iraq to remain a unified, centralized state with its capital in Baghdad, notwithstanding the growing American consensus for some sort of soft partition. In my previous post I suggested that the numbers were likely substantially higher since I assume support for a centralized Iraq is very low among Iraqi Kurds.

That’s true. But the details are still more telling. TPM Reader NB points out that the data chart at ABCNews (I was working off the one from the BBC.) And the ABC chart has the data broken down by ethnic group on page 21.

As expected, Iraqi Kurds are split about evenly between supporters of formal independence (49%) and federal state with three autonomous regions (42%). Only 9% support a unitary state.

The is the big gulf between Shia and Sunnis. Since March Iraq’s Shia population has solidified in favor of a unitary state. 56% now support it as opposed to 41% in March. The key though are the Sunnis. 97% supported a unitary state in March and 97% support it today.

That’s a telling number, and one that bespeaks a great deal of potential violence behind it. The group most excluded from power in Iraq today is the one most committed to an Iraq with strong centralized government — presumably not one where they are systematically excluded from power.

House GOP introducing legislation to condemn Moveon “Betray Us” ad.

Paul Krugman is over at TPMCafe today discussing Jon Chait’s new book.

Spencer will be providing ongoing coverage at TPMmuckraker today of the second round of hearings. First up is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, followed by the Senate Armed Services Committee this afternoon.

The takeaway from yesterday’s round of Iraq hearings: President Bush is content to leave the hard decisions on Iraq for the next President.

Maybe it’s a case of the better you know him, the less you like him. Election Central has the details.