The Politico story I slammed yesterday--about Harry Reid criticizing Generals Pace and Petraeus in a conference call with liberal bloggers--turns out to be accurate, at least as it relates to Pace. Blogger Bob Geiger, who was on the call, has confirmed that Reid described Pace as "incompetent." The outstanding question, as far as I can tell, is what, if anything, Reid said about Petraeus during the call. The initial story asserted that the majority leader made "similar disparaging remarks" about Petraeus but gave no further sense of what those comments might have been. As I noted in my earlier post, this always seemed to me the most implausible (and inflammatory) element of the story. A followup blog post by the reporter of the initial piece, John Bresnahan, repeats the claim that Reid made "disparaging remarks" about Petraeus (though they're no longer described as "similar" to the Pace charge) but again offers no further detail. Bresnahan does note a criticism of Petraeus that Reid made publicly yesterday, specifically that Petraeus is not being "very candid" about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Reid also reiterated, however, that he holds Petraeus in "high regard." So, yes, Reid did describe Pace as "incompetent." But there's still no real evidence that he called Petraeus anything remotely similar to "incompetent," which was the clear impression given by the article. (As a general rule, it seems to me rather unprofessional to cite "disparaging remarks" if one doesn't know, or is unable to say, what those remarks were.) I'll gladly update if I hear more. --Christopher Orr