Petraeus's comments to the Financial Times newspaper

Two points:

a) This is a pretty big news story, given to the FT, not the IHT, nor the NYT. Doesn't say much for the IHT's stature in the minds of Pentagon handlers when wanting to speak to the world.

b) The current exec. editor of the IHT is known for his anti blogger comments, calling them people who riff of the MSM.

In this case (see below) the IHT relied on Reuters to pick it up, and used their piece.

That's called riffing off (by the IHT) those who riff (in this case Reuters) off the MSM (in this case the FT).


U.S. troops may quit Baghdad "by July"
LONDON: U.S. combat troops could be pulled out of Baghdad within 10 months because of declining violence in the Iraqi capital, General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, said in an interview published on Thursday.
Petraeus's comments to the Financial Times newspaper came as the United States and Iraq seek to finalise a security pact that will govern the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year.
There are about 145,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Petraeus was referring in his interview to the roughly 16,000 stationed in Baghdad, the paper said.
Asked whether it was feasible that U.S. combat forces could leave Baghdad by July, Petraeus said: "Conditions permitting, yeah.
"The number of attacks in Baghdad lately has been ... I think it's probably less than five (a day) on average, and that's a city of seven million people," he added.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/04/africa/OUKWD-UK-IRAQ-PETRAEUS.php