By now everyone knows that our top general in Iraq, David Petraeus, has been personally devastated by an ad MoveOn published last week asking if Petraeus had “Betray[ed] Us” (a play on his name) by cooking the books on Iraq. (Petraeus has cooked the books before, most recently when he was in charge of training the still-non-existent Iraqi security forces and repeatedly lied about how well it was going, and got chewed out by Ambassador Negroponte as a result). To hear the Republicans talk (President Bush attacked MoveOn today in a press conference and the House and Senate Republicans want to pass legislation decrying MoveOn), Petraeus has been sitting in a tent in the desert crying his eyes out, unable to engage the enemy for an entire week.

Which leads me to ask a very serious and troubling question: If David Petraeus can’t handle being called a name, how is he going to handle Al Qaeda?

PS The Senate just passed its legislation, with Hillary and the other Dem presidential contenders voting against it (hear hear) – well, that is, everyone except Obama, who voted for the Democratic alternative and then was a no-show for the vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing bill.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiuRhy4CqzU]

UPDATE: Obama has released a statement about why he didn’t vote on the GOP MoveOn-bashing amendment