Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- In modern warfare, the main theater of battle is television. Someday they'll hand out Emmy Awards in lieu of ribbons and medals.

If it happens soon, General David Petraeus and CBS's Katie Couric may be recognized for their fine work in supporting roles in President George W. Bush's latest PR campaign. It's designed to dupe the U.S. public into believing we're doing well enough in Iraq to stick his successor with the evacuation.

As part of the production, Bush secretly flew into Iraq's Anbar Province last week, where Couric just happened to be on hand and available for an exclusive interview. After that, she found a Baghdad marketplace almost as safe as the one Senator John McCain discovered on an earlier visit, when he was surrounded by security.

``You know, this market seems to be thriving,'' Couric said. ``And there were a lot of people out and about.''

She called Petraeus a ``leader'' bringing ``safety in daily life.'' Coupled with her bouncy blog, missing only a smiley face (``Hi there from Baghdad''), this was as good a warm-up act as Petraeus could have hoped for.

Not that he needed one. Washington brakes for third-place anchors whose clothes, cars and colon are chronicled in the tabloids, and a four-star general with an Ivy League degree. The president had built up Petraeus for months; he even renamed the surge ``Petraeus's strategy.''

Technical Difficulties

When the long-awaited hearings began, rather than let the general speak, members of the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees meandered through their own statements.

Petraeus waited respectfully, his back straight, his charts and graphs ready. Then when his turn came and he pulled the mike in front of his face, there was no sound. In a back-and-forth reminiscent of the Verizon man's ``Can you hear me now?'' commercial, the technical difficulties ate up a 15-minute recess. Score the general 1, Congress 0.

When Petraeus finally got under way, Democrats, who are still Karl Rove-whipped, gave the general lots of room. It helped that he announced a drawdown of some troops by Christmas (not because the surge is successful but the military is stretched so thin).

Just as the White House did before invading Iraq, Petraeus cherry-picked statistics to show violence in Iraq had fallen, an assessment at odds with other reports. Petraeus only counts as sectarian violence incidents in which the bullet goes through the back of the head. Front-of-the-head killings are ordinary crimes.

Ethnic Cleansing

The slight downtick in violence doesn't take into account that ethnic cleansing and a flight to refugee camps have left fewer people to kill. And overall, violence is higher than in 2005 and 2006.

Petraeus claimed 445,000 Iraqi security forces on the ``payroll,'' when it's closer to 320,000, by independent accounts. And he used a dubious category since so many of those collecting paychecks don't actually show up. Many others are corrupt and by night go on murderous rampages using American weapons.

Whatever military progress has been made, it hasn't produced the ``breathing space'' Bush claimed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needed to form a stable government. What's more, a scant three of the 18 benchmarks laid out by Bush and Maliki have been met.

One success story in Anbar is at best a mixed blessing. Americans have temporarily shaken hands with the Sunnis who need them to fight a homegrown strain of al-Qaeda. At any moment, Sunnis could go back to killing Shiites, of course. If Sunnis control Anbar, Bush has to give up his primary goal of a unity government.

Which Iraq?

Petraeus's ``success'' in Anbar just highlights the larger problem that we don't know which Iraq we're fighting for. Our former enemies (the Sunnis) are our new best friends. Our former friends (the Shiites) are our enemy standing in the way of oil- revenue sharing and political reconciliation that would get us out of there.

The day after his House appearance, Petraeus went over to the Senate where he was overshadowed by coverage of the anniversary of 9/11. He read the same prepared statement. This seemed fine with the senators, who wanted to talk about themselves anyway.

The TV blitz continued with Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, holding a press conference, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appearing on NBC, and the president planning to address the country at 9 p.m. tonight.

Carrying Bush's Message

TV can hurt as well as help. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart spliced a bunch of sound bites together showing Petraeus and Bush using strikingly similar language to describe progress in Iraq. This undermined protestations that Petraeus was operating independently of the White House.

This isn't the first time Petraeus carried Bush's message. In an op-ed piece just before the 2004 elections, the general wrote that there was ``tangible progress'' and that Iraqi forces were improving.

The Petraeus show may deliver Bush from office without his ever having to confess he was wrong, that he destabilized one of the most strategically important parts of the globe. What the performance did stabilize was Congress. Republicans who looked ready to abandon Bush last spring seem mollified. Without defectors, Democrats can't get a majority to bring the troops home.

Democracy Anyone?

Among all the verbiage, there's no longer mention of democracy in Iraq. The ``devastating consequences'' Petraeus predicted should we leave have become Bush's primary excuse for staying. What Petraeus didn't say is that chaos will likely ensue whether we leave tomorrow or in 10 years.

By the time the next president has to put it all back together again, Bush will be in Texas, writing a book, giving speeches ``to replenish the ol' coffers'' and riding his mountain bike more, an aide reportedly said, than anyone ``but Lance Armstrong or a 12-year old boy.''

He'll tell anyone who will listen that it was all someone else's fault. It won't matter how good his performance is then. The cameras won't be rolling.

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 13, 2007 00:06 EDT