Fun With Graphs

Yes, Powerpoint has been the butt of parody before. Rarely, however, has it served the Confused God of Obfuscation as well as it did in General Petraeus's hands yesterday. Matthew Yglesias has the rundown on one particularly dishonest graph and Kevin Drum marvels at another.

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, here's an astonishing quote from Petraeus's PhD dissertation:

The Vietnam experience left the military leadership feeling that they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely, circumstances obtain -- i.e. domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign, and freedom to employ whatever force is necessary to achieve rapid victory. In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and costly enough to threaten the well-being of all America's military forces (and hence the country's national security), not just those involved in the actual counterinsurgency.