Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo.

“‘This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,’ said Weinstein. ‘It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.'”

I like Saving Private Ryan as much as the next guy, but this, in a word, is ridicky-goddamn-diculous. Apparently, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are routinely outfitted with sniper rifles etched with New Testament verse. “Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon…said the inscriptions ‘have always been there’ and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is ‘not Christian.’“

Newsflash: Given that we’re currently engaged in multiple wars and are strongly trying to avoid any appearance of being involved in any sort of anti-Muslim Crusade, arming our soldiers with “Jesus rifles” and crafting bible-thumping war reports for the Commander-in-Chief isn’t just catastrophically stupid. It’s basically writing the Al Qaeda recruiting posters for them.

Update: Also, “They started it!” is not an appropriate response to this dismal revelation.

Update 2: Trijicon stands down — Jesus rifles are hereby discontinued, most likely because of quotes like these: “General David Petraeus also addressed the scopes this morning, calling the matter ‘disturbing and a serious concern for me.‘”

Petraeus: Same as it ever was.

“Judging from Gen. David Petraeus’ Senate testimony today, our military commitment to Iraq is open-ended and unconditional…Their unwavering stance amounted to this: Further pullouts might trigger defeat; the costs of defeat are too horrible to ponder; therefore, we shouldn’t ponder further pullouts.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan takes the measure of yesterday’s Petraeus hearings, and the performances of Senators Obama [transcript | video], Clinton and McCain respectively. “Near the end of the afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee but a junior member of the foreign relations committee, finally got his turn to ask questions — and he homed in on one of the administration’s key conceptual failures…’I’m trying to get to an end point,’ he said. ‘That’s what all of us are trying to do.’ This is what many critics and thoughtful supporters of the war have been trying to do for five years now. The Bush administration hasn’t addressed the issue. And, ultimately, neither did Petraeus or Crocker today.”

Morning in Baghdad: The Petraeus and Crocker Show.

Declaring that “the military objectives of the surge are in large measure being met” (an assertion which rests, of course, on how one jukes the stats and skews the benchmarks), Army General David Petraeus, Dubya’s most recent man in Iraq, tells Congress he’s recommending a drawdown of troop levels in Iraq to pre-surge levels — around 130,000 troops — by July of next year. [Transcript.] Not a huge surprise — As Fred Kaplan noted both a few weeks ago and in his quality preview of today’s testimony, the Army would run out of troops by April anyway, so this was a foregone conclusion. Also, obviously, not what you’d call a real withdrawal (although the WP story’s cited experts suggest it may be taken as the “beginning of the end” by interested parties in Iraq…and Iran.) So, in effect, Petraeus punted to next July.

For his part, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker backed Petraeus’ “Things are Getting Better” remarks in his own testimony, and intimated that the surge had staved off a near-total collapse. He also warned the nation about the nature of our continuing commitment there: “‘There will be no single moment in which we can claim victory,’ and any turning point will be recognized only ‘in retrospect.’“

Juking the Stats in Iraq.

Are things getting better in Iraq? If so, it’ll be hard to prove with the statistics lately offered by the US military, which critics claim once again have been cherry-picked and “selectively ignore negative trends.” “In its December 2006 report, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group identified ‘significant underreporting of violence,’ noting that ‘a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack’…Recent estimates by the media, outside groups and some government agencies have [also] called the military’s findings into question.“

In any case, it seems that, despite Dubya and Gen. Petraeus’s claims to the contrary, Iraqi security forces are nowhere close to being able to handle the load in Baghdad, according to a new report by a commission of retired military officers. “The report expresses concern about what it calls the massive U.S. military logistical ‘footprint’ in Iraq and its effect on perceptions and problems. ‘The unintended message conveyed is one of “permanence,” an occupying force, as it were,’ the report says. It recommends reconsideration of ‘efficiency, necessity…and cost’ and calls for ‘significant reductions, consolidations and realignments” of U.S. forces.’”