"Asking Petraeus to assess the situation in September might be asking him - if the evidence pointed in that direction - to say that his whole counterinsurgency strategy was wrong. If the evidence is not clear, he would most likely cherry-pick data by pointing out, as he already has, that sectarian violence is down in Baghdad, while ignoring such inconvenient truths as the increase in suicide bombings or the rise in deaths of American soldiers and contractors.

Was Gen. William Westmoreland ever objective about the attrition strategy in Vietnam or Gen. Douglas MacArthur about the Chinese intervention in Korea?"

I doubt Gen. Petraeus got to where he is by doubting his own abilities or offering any real hard objective criticism of the President's policy in Iraq to date.  As I said in an earlier post, this is the guy made responsible for building the new Iraqi Army a couple years ago and despite his glowing editorials to date I'm not sure I see much in the way of progress on that front, either.