More on Boyda's trip to the Middle East

John over at Argghhh! The Home of Two of Jonah's Military Guys has a good wrap up of Congresswoman Nancy Boyda's telephone press conference today regarding her recently concluded trip to Iraq and Turkey.

Highlights include:

In her prepared remarks, she made clear she believes that the downward spiral of escalating violence has stopped, and begun a slow, upward, positive trend. Or, as she said, "The undeniable fact is, violence is significantly down in Iraq, and everyone should be extremely grateful for that."

Which she then caveated thusly: "General Petraeus and General Gaskin do not want to overstate what is going on - they don't want to jinx it. It is very fragile, and they know it."

and

3. The "outstanding leadership" of General Petraeus in both managing the application of violence and engaging with leaders of both sides of the Shi'a-Sunni divide, with the premise that "we are not going to continue to infuriate the Iraqis all the time, we are going to understand their culture and work within it." Clearly, Nancy is *not* a subscriber to the "General Betray-us" viewpoint.

We'll have more of our own analysis soon.