Remember, back in the day, when Bush and the rest of the Republican Party were calling on all of us to defer to the “commanders on the ground” when it came to military and national security policy?

Remember how Republican leaders like John McCain seemed to harbor a cringe-inducing man-crush on General David Petraeus?

Oh, how the worm has turned.

Now that a Democrat is in office, the Republican leadership in Washington is insisting that the President ignore the advice of Admiral Mike Mullen and General Petraeus (both of whom served under Premier Bush) when it comes to the issues of closing Guantanamo and torture.

Here’s what General Petraeus had to say:

General David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama’s decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.

In an appearance on Radio Free Europe Sunday, the man hailed by conservatives as the preeminent military figure of his generation left little room for doubt about where he stands on some of Obama’s most contentious policies…

“I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention … With respect to Guantanamo, I think that the closure in a responsible manner … But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees.”

Mullen dismissed criticism by former Vice President Dick Cheney this week against the president’s argument that Guantanamo Bay has served as an effective recruiting tool for al Qaeda.

“The concern I’ve had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers — you know, that’s the heart of the concern for Guantanamo’s continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it,” Mullen said.

Update: Here’s Steve Benen:

Now, I’ve been critical at times of Petraeus (and Powell, for the matter), and I’m not suggesting their arguments have merit only when I agree with their conclusions.

The point is that Petraeus’ position makes the Republican attacks that much less credible. In most GOP circles, there’s practically a religious reverence for Petraeus, and yet he now seems to have no use for the right’s single most important arguments of the day.

As a matter of policy, Obama is obviously right and his detractors are clearly wrong. But as a matter of political optics, we’re now dealing with a situation in which the president’s position — the one the right thinks is dangerous, naive, and terrorist-friendly — has been endorsed by Bush’s Defense Secretary (Gates), Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Mullen), Bush’s Secretary of State (Powell), and the general Bush tapped to head U.S. Central Command (Petraeus).

On the other side, we have Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and some craven members of Congress.