It was indeed symbolic that General Patraeus' microphone did not work when it came time for him to deliver his report to Congress. The democrats who run Congress these days obviously didn't want to hear what he had to say.

They would rather listen to the tapes repeating their own stories playing incessantly through their ear buds. One of those stories is that their job is to end the war in Iraq even if it means destroying our country, the people who believe in it, and the people who defend it, in the process. That story is a successive approximation of the truth. The truth is that the American people want to leave Iraq as successfully as possible with a successful outcome. Democrats have no idea how to do that. So they have settled on defeat and escape instead. Another tape democrats are playing for themselves is that a defeat in Iraq will keep then in office in 2008. Another fiction.

That Congress would require an independent assessment of anything, and then engage in a campaign to refute the results of that assessment before they are completed and presented clearly illustrates just how dysfunctional Congress has become, and it also explains Congress' historically low approval rating.