Following on Sen. Barack Obama’s lead, former Sen. John Edwards suggested in a speech today that as President he would not hesitate to conduct U.S. counter-terrorism operations on Pakistan soil if the Pakistani government refused to take action itself.

Alas, there won’t be a report from General Petraeus, at least not a written report.

Late Update: Over at The Horse’s Mouth, Greg has more on the report and the rhetorical jostling over who exactly is responsible for it, the White House or Gen. Petraeus.

John Edwards was at NYC’s Pace University today for what his campaign billed as a major policy speech on counter-terrorism. Josh got a chance to sit down with Edwards for an interview following the speech. They discussed the “War on Terror” and the road ahead in Iraq. We’ll have video of some of the interview shortly.

In his latest public statement, Osama bin Laden (or someone purporting to be him) wades pretty deep into U.S. domestic politics, according to a transcript of his remarks obtained by ABC News:

He says to the American people, “you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld…”

“You permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you — with your full knowledge and consent — to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then you claim to be innocent! The innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th — were I to claim such a thing.”

Bin Laden says President Bush’s words echo “neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle.”

“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there.”

Now, here’s the thing. Both sides of Iraq debate may be tempted to use bin Laden’s words to some perverse advantage. Bush Administration supporters (and, in fairness, no one has exploited bin Laden’s statements quite like the Bush Administration) will try to extract some measure of satisfaction that if bin Laden is against us, we must be doing the right thing. Iraq War opponents might be tempted to note that bin Laden is calling out the Democrats for not stopping the war. Whatever. Bin Laden is a crazy, evil man. No one should take any pleasure in trying to exploit his rantings for their own partisan purposes. The only legitimate political point to be made is why is this guy still free to spout such noxious rhetoric six years after the September 11 attacks.

How will we determine the whereabouts of the new bin Laden puppet who has taken over al Qaeda?

As I skimmed the transcript of the new bin Laden tape with its discussion of global warming, subprime credit woes, Noam Chomsky, Richard Perle, the low tax nirvana of Islam and a bunch of other stuff, I could not help feeling sad again about how we gave this joker a new lease on life by invading Iraq. Hannah Arendt spoke of the ‘banality of evil’. This may only rise to the level of the ridiculousness of evil. And perhaps not even that.

I don’t gainsay the danger or destructive power of the man. I still remember Rick Hertzberg’s quote just after 9/11 that the attacks were as brilliant as they were evil. (This is from memory: so I may have the precise words wrong. But he well captured the way in which the horror and evil of the attacks were matched by their diabolical ingeniusness.) But as an articulator of a vision, an expounder of “Islamofascism,” or whatever the new trademarked word is now, he’s about as coherent and comprehensible as a 9th tier blogger or one of those whacks sitting on a stoop in Union Square talking about fascism and Texas oil barons before they get overcome by the shakes or decide to start collecting more aluminum cans.

If my predictive powers are still working right, I’m sure I’ll catch flack for taking such a mocking attitude toward this man who has so much American blood on his hands. But this, I think, is only the flip side of the vaunted perch we insist on giving him, a insistence that is a paradoxical part of Bushism. They are tacit partners in creating the world in which we now live.

In the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, George Packer surveys the failure of the surge:

The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

The media have largely followed the Administration’s myopic approach to the war, and there is likely to be intense coverage of the congressional testimony. But the inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis. . . .

The balance of the piece looks at the road ahead and the very difficult decisions that the U.S. is avoiding making and has been avoiding for many months. If our options before ranged from bad to worse, they now range from worse to horrible.

As we noted below, we interviewed Sen. Edwards today about terrorism and Iraq. We’ll be bringing you those episodes of TPMtv on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. For now, we wanted bring you a quick preview, Sen. Edwards on the Petraeus Report and ‘the surge’ …

I’ll have more on this over the weekend. But take a look at this new post on the Jerry Lewis (R-CA) investigation. First, ‘budget shortfalls’ led to the very unfortunate decision to slow down the investigation. Then a senior prosecutor was put in place by the acting US Attorney in LA to jumpstart the investigation. Now Main Justice has forced him into retirement.

Give this one a read. The DOJ shenanigans may not be over.

Maybe there is a limit as to how far the White House will–or can–go to spin the situation on the ground in Iraq as positive.

On his way to the APEC conference in Australia this week, President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq. Actually, the visit was limited to the confines of a U.S. base there. Iraq is too dangerous for the President to visit anywhere where Iraqis actually live. The very fact that the visit has to be a “surprise” for security reasons evidences the violence and instability within the country. But that wasn’t going to stop a gung-ho White House speechwriter from touting the President’s visit itself as proof that things are getting better in Iraq.

Here is a portion of the speech President Bush was to give today at the APEC conference. This is from the “as prepared for delivery” version of the speech which is released in advance to media organizations that cover the White House (emphasis mine):

On my way to this week’s summit, I stopped in Iraq’s Anbar Province. Last year, Anbar was an al Qaida stronghold and one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Al Qaida terrorized the province, using torture and murder to keep the local population in line. Then, Sunnis who had fought with al Qaida against Coalition troops turned on the terrorists, and began fighting with Coalition troops against al Qaida. Together, Americans and Iraqis drove al Qaida from strongholds in the region. And today, because of their sacrifice, Anbar is one of the safest places in Iraq – so safe that the President of the United States can drop in to thank the troops for their courage in the fight to protect us all.

Someone must have spotted the sheer inanity of that line and rewrote it because in the speech the President actually delivered that section is gone, replaced with a more benign account of the President’s visit:

You may have heard, on my way down here I stopped in Iraq–stopped in Anbar Province. Anbar was an al Qaeda stronghold. Their leaders of al Qaeda had announced that they were going to establish a safe haven from which to launch further attacks on my nation–for starters. It was a part of Iraq that was dangerous and, the truth of the matter is, the a lot of the experts in my country had said was lost to al Qaeda.

I went there because al Qaeda has lost Anbar. The opposite happened. Anbar is a Sunni province that once had people joining al Qaeda — they’re now turning against al Qaeda. . . . And I was proud to go there.

Citing the President’s brief stop in a heavily guarded U.S. encampment as proof of peace and stability in the country at large was too over the top, even for the White House.