I've been on the run today. But I've also been busy myth-busting.

In recent days, there has been a round of Ronald Reagan praising that's come from...Democrats. Yes, Democrats--including President Barack Obama. So I thought a remedial lesson was necessary. Here it is.

Also, yesterday Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, whom Obama has picked to head US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, appeared before the Senate armed services committee for a confirmation hearing. For years, he was in charge of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, which in 2006 found and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda in Iraq leader. And McChrystal comes across as a bright and confident commander. He seems competent. He has been widely praised. At the hearing, he frankly acknowledged that two key problems in Afghanistan have been civilian casualties caused by US troops and rampant corruption.

But McChrystal has some baggage. He ran JSOC when one of its units in Iraq was involved in abusive treatment of detainees at a secret base outside Baghdad called Camp Nama. (See here and here for graphic details.) Senator Carl Levin, the committee chair, did ask McChrystal about abusive treatment of prisoners, and McChrystal declared that he did not condone it. But neither Levin nor any of the other committee members asked McChrystal specifically about Camp Nama and reports that McChrystal visited the site.

This was a stunning omission. Clearly, the hearing had been orchestrated--so McChrystal would have the chance to condemn abusive treatment but not have to answer any tough questions about actual acts of abuse that happened under his command. Levin and the other senators wanted him confirmed without a fuss (perhaps because Gen. David Petraeus, whom everyone on Capitol Hill adores, wants McChrystal in this post). In any event, it was a low moment in confirmation hearings. The senators should have vigorously questioned McChrystal about Camp Nama. Instead, they gave him a pass. And dark questions remain.

I was able to complain about this later that day on PBS's Newshour. Transcript here; video here.

You can follow my postings and media appearances via Twitter by clicking here.

Ex-veep Dick Cheney has claimed that there are two classified documents showing that the enhanced interrogation techniques (a.k.a. torture) used on US-held detainees were effective and helped his administration prevent terrorist attacks. Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chair of the Senate armed services committee, this past week said these documents do not support Cheney's argument. On Hardball, conservative commentator Terry Jeffrey and I try to sort it out. Guess whose side Jeffrey was on. Guest host David Shuster was on fire, going after Jeffrey on the use of torture. But we did find consensus on a critical point: President Obama should declassify those two documents--and other material--so that the public can determine if Cheney is telling the truth or not.

You can follow my postings and media appearances via Twitter by clicking here.

On Monday, I noted that when General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, testified before Congress last September he wielded a chart entitled "Iraqi Security Forces Capabilities." That graphic aid hardly backed up the argument that the Iraqi forces were on the march. It showed that the level of Iraqi troops that were fully independent or that could stage operations of their own with the support of U.S. forces had dipped slightly between September 2006 and September 2007. That indicated that over the course of a year, according to Petraeus' own numbers, there had been no progress--none--in fielding Iraqi security forces that could function on their own. That seemed a rather strong indicator.

So on Tuesday morning, as I watched Petraeus' testimony before the Senate armed services committee, I waited to get his handouts to see what had happened on this front in the past seven months. As soon as he began testifying, the committee made his charts available. And--whaddayaknow?--this time he had no version of this chart. There was one chart indicating that more Iraqi battalions were now taking the lead in military operations than in January 2007. But this point was challenged by Senator Carl Levin, the committee chairman. Levin said that he was recently informed that of 110 joint U.S.-Iraqi operations of company size or greater in Iraq in the first three months of 2008, Iraqi forces assumed the lead in only ten of these missions. Still, Petraeus testified that the Iraqi forces have "grown significantly" since September, but he did not provide information on their capabilities that would allow an observer to compare current numbers to those he presented to Congress in September. Anyone care to guess why?

During his testimony, Petraeus said what was expected: the so-called surge is working, progress is real if fragile. And he said that there should be no reduction of troops beyond a return to the pre-surge levels. At the same time, the Democratic war critics on the committee missed a chance to present a cohesive and extensive challenge to Bush's war. I suss it all out here.