General Petraeus speaks (his opening remarks are here. Via TPM, here is Ambassador Crocker's opening statement):

Will discuss "his recommendations to his chain of command." Insists that this is his personal statement uncleared by anyone.

"The security goals of the Surge are being met."

Second political highlight - "we can reduce forces by next summer." Does not say in any detail what that means.

More below the fold.

The Joint House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on the Surge, featuring the testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, has just commenced. You can view it online on C-Span3.

I will be live-blogging the testimony below the fold. Please add your comments.

Update: Sen. Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea is available here.

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The Idaho Statesman reports Larry Craig's motion to vacate his guilty plea have now been filed. CNN has more. I'm waiting to find a copy and will post them when available.

Some reported quotes:

“While in this state of intense anxiety, Senator Craig felt compelled to grasp the lifeline offered to him by the police officer; namely, that if he were to submit to an interview and plead guilty, then none of the officer’s allegations would be made public,” said the documents filed in Hennepin County District Court.

“Thus, rather than seek legal advice from an attorney to assist him in publicly fighting these charges and potentially protract the issue, Senator Craig’s panic drove him to accept a guilty plea, the terms of which offered him what he thought was a private, expeditious resolution of this matter,” the papers said.

Craig’s filing argued that his guilty plea was not “knowingly and understandingly made.” It also argued that the evidence was insufficient to support the plea as a matter of law.”

Via Yglesias, I give O'Hanlon credit, he has stopped fibbing about being a "Iraq war and Surge critic." And he does so in an appropriate venue, National Review, where he becomes an open apologist for General Petraeus:

For those reading this after watching General David Petraeus’s Monday testimony, I strongly suspect that my main argument will have become apparent to many: General Petraeus is a straight shooter who does not and will not cook the books. . . . Some of Petraeus’s critics will argue, as they already have, that he wrote an oped in the fall of 2004 that was too optimistic about the training of Iraqi Security Forces then — and too closely timed to the American elections that November. To them, that suggests he was and is acting as an agent of White House spin. That oped may in retrospect have been somewhat too optimistic. . . . However, a possible misjudgment on this matter hardly shows Petraeus to be a spinmeister. If anything, it shows him to be human. . . .

Sure, O'Hanlon, sure. I see "Fox news analyst Michael O'Hanlon" in your future.

Big Tent Democrat will be live-blogging Gen. Petraeus' testimony before Congress in other threads today.

For those of you who want to discuss other issues, here's an open thread.

Diary Rescue: Check out:

• Geekesque's diary, Obama to reboot his Iraq policy and rhetoric.

• Randinho (of Beautiful Horizens)'s diary, When Will They Learn Volume XX

• John Horse writing How Bush Used Lt Cmdr Speicher

Also check out the pix of some of your favorite bloggers partying in LA this weekend. Jane identifies them in comment #26.

I'll be waiting for Larry Craigs' plea withdrawal filing to hit the internet so I can parse it and give my opinion.

stemming from this WaPo article:

For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region.

The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops. . . .

In an atrocious piece of reporting fueled by a rigged poll question, the New York Times "reports:"

Americans trust military commanders far more than the Bush administration or Congress to bring the war in Iraq to a successful end, and while most favor a withdrawal of American troops beginning next year, they suggested they were open to doing so at a measured pace, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. . . . Asked to choose among the administration, Congress and military commanders, 21 percent said they would most trust Congress and 68 percent expressed most trust in military commanders.

There are many problems with this storyline. First and foremost, Americans do not get to choose who gets to "end the war." Perhaps the New York Times does not know this, but we are a country that has civilian control of the military. The military follows the orders of the civilian Commander in Chief, the President of the United States. Bruce Ackerman has written on this alarming view of military control apparently endorsed by the news pages of the New York Times.

More.

The War on Drugs is not just in America. Around the world, people are dying in pain because doctors won't prescribe pain medication. Why? The War on Drugs. Narcotics have become the equivalent of a dirty word.

Like millions of others in the world’s poorest countries, she is destined to die in pain. She cannot get the drug she needs — one that is cheap, effective, perfectly legal for medical uses under treaties signed by virtually every country, made in large quantities, and has been around since Hippocrates praised its source, the opium poppy. She cannot get morphine.

That is not merely because of her poverty, or that of Sierra Leone. Narcotics incite fear: doctors fear addicting patients, and law enforcement officials fear drug crime. Often, the government elite who can afford medicine for themselves are indifferent to the sufferings of the poor.

If someone is dying in pain, addiction is the last thing they care about or we should be concerned about. Opium, heroin and morphine are not dirty words. They relieve pain. They should be readily available to those who need them.

More....

The Democratic candidates held their first debate broadcast in Spanish on Univison. On immigration:

Clinton criticized the immigration bill proposed in the last Congress, dominated by Republicans. That legislation would have penalized those who help illegal immigrants. "I said it would have criminalized the good Samaritan. It would have criminalized Jesus Christ," she said.

Bill Richardson, showing off:

Richardson, one of two candidate who speak fluent Spanish, objected to the debate rules that required all candidates to answer in English. The rule was designed to make sure that no candidate had an advantage in appealing to the Spanish-speaking audience.

Mike Gravel:

"I honor everyone who comes to this country as an immigrant because we are all immigrants."

Dennis Kucinich was the only candidate endorsing Spanish as America's second language. Joe Biden didn't attend the debate.

The Washington Post has more on the debate.

Larry Craig's lawyer Billy Martin said today he will file papers with the court in Minnesota tomorrow seeking to withdraw Craig's guilty plea.

Martin would not disclose the grounds, but said he was not concerned about Craig's political survival.

My job is to get him back to where he was before his rights were taken away," Martin said.

I'm still thinking, as I've been since August 30th, that the principal ground will be that the plea form (pdf)Craig mailed in did not advise him of his right to counsel. (Video here, about 3 minutes in.)

As other grounds, there's the argument that the facts he admitted to don't constitute a crime and in my view, a much weaker argument that he was illegally arrested because he was on his way to vote in DC and the Constitution prevents lawmakers from being arrested on their way to a vote.

Update: CNN has more, including statements from a source hinting at the grounds. All grounds will go to his plea not being made intelligently and knowingly because of his rights' violations.

Media types are busy speculating who Al Gore will endorse in 2008. He has said he expects to make an endorsement before the primaries.

No one expects Gore to endorse Hillary. I suspect he will endorse Obama, who has been campaigning for his endorsement (as have John Edwards and Chris Dodd. Neither Hillary, Biden nor Richardson have met with Dodd.)

In 2004, Gore endorsed Howard Dean. A month later, Dean was history.

Does Gore's endorsement matter? As much or more than Oprah's?

See Joe Biden on Meet the Press this morning. Crooks and Liars has the video in which Biden says he won't vote to cut off war funding.

When asked by host Tim Russert if he would vote to cut off funding for Iraq if President Bush refuses to accept a withdrawal date, Biden moves directly to the “cutting off funding means you don’t support the troops” mentality pulled straight from the pages of the RNC playbook. Instead of speaking the truth, that it means appropriating funds to begin a safe and smart withdrawal from the country, not abandoning out troops, Biden instead says he won’t vote to cut off funding and chooses to chastise Democrats who support it.

It’s infuriating to say the least to see Biden falling for the White House framing– not one single Democrat in Congress wants to leave our soldiers stranded in the middle of the desert with no food, water, ammo or protection–and cutting off Bush’s funding would not do that–and Senator Biden should know better.

Update: See below for some of the reasons I've never favored Joe Biden.