“I think it’s important that we turn it around quickly, I might say a little bit longer now,” McChrystal said, but we used the last six months at full throttle. we didn’t waste a minute.” That provides a “foundation” to use the extended surge. By next summer, he said he tells his command, “I expect there to be significant progress that is evident to us inside our force.” By next December, when he said he will return to testify, “I expect to lay real progress out to everyone.” And by the summer of 2011, it will be “unequivocally clear to the Afghan people” that the momentum is on the side of the Afghan government, NATO and the United States, which he said he expects will be “decisive.”

One difference between the Petraeus 2007 hearings and today? Petraeus was never this unequivocal.

One question Congressional Democrats still want answered: Was the program an idea CIA officials had just talked about as a possibility, or had they actually put it into operation? If it was just talk, as some in the intelligence community insist, the argument could be made that there was no requirement to notify congress. “This program came in post 9/11, and it was indeed on again, off again, the official said. “You could argue that it never really took shape.” The implication is that whatever the details of the program, it carried risks that some officials at the agency strongly felt might not be worth taking.

According to Isinball’s sources (or, if you prefer, Hosenkoff’s), the program wasn’t about to be exposed in the media — this is a case of Panetta excavating the agency’s files and bringing something apparently alarming to Congress. Greg Sargent gets a similar reaction from a GOPer on the committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas): this is about something Congress didn’t know about.

Update: I should have seen earlier that Sam backed away from the torture-claim too.