Gen. Petraeus will not comment on ongoing investigations

We knew it was out there...

Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials....

One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

Later in the article, Petraeus defends himself by admitting that, to some degree, he may have facilitated some of this by "mak(ing) a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place" in a rush to arm the Iraqis he was training.

So, I think the unasked question, separate from any issuess of graft, is how good of a decision was it to abandon the tracking systems to arm Iraqi "soldiers" who rather quickly took their weapons and abandoned the Iraqi forces? We're fighting alot of those guys today.

The reason this is an issue is because the decision to work with the Sunni tribesmen right now is remarkably similar. In a rush to get results, Petraeus is risking far bigger problems downstream.