Captain's Quarters -

I found this last bit interesting: "The militant death toll was 366, a drop of 106 from the previous month."

So fewer of everybody -- good guys and bad guys -- died in Iraq last month. If we were "winning," one would expect the rate of bad-guy killing to increase while the rate of civilian casualties drops.

Instead what's happening is just that, given that the failed "surge" consists of standing around and letting ethnic cleansing happen, the U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing (that is, violence drops in neighborhoods where we have allowed ethnic cleansing to take place).

Also, given the fact that Iraq casualties for the last few months were higher than last year, it may be a bit pointless to celebrate a one-month drop from "genocide" to "B-minus genocide" in Iraq. I mean, you war pornographers were strangely silent about the fact that Iraq was getting worse under the surge, and now that there's one moderately good month, you forget all the bad months.

Grieve the drop in deaths, Plank. Grieve for the Left.

Grieve the drop in deaths, Plank. Grieve for the Left.

See, that's the difference between us: I grieve for the deaths. You know, the people who are dead because we're occupying Iraq. You see dead people as just numbers, so a huge number of dead Iraqis is "good news" to you.

This sounds like good news ("good" being a relative term, of course) but how does it compare to previous Septembers? The death toll tends to fluctuate throughout the year.

Plank, how about grieving for the victims of Saddam Hussein? The ones killed by him and the ones who were dying due to the sanction regime under Oil-for-Food (about 5,000 per month according to the Left).

Drop in the deaths of the bad guys is probably due to the fact that there are fewer bad guys. The Sunnis are realizing they can't use force to get back to where they were.

How does it compare to previous Septembers? It's around a 75% drop from last September - which happened to be the worst month in Iraq probably since Saddam was annihilating the post-Gulf War Shiite uprising. Really, guys, why don't you check the numbers before you start flailing around with desperate efforts to deny the obvious? Try Icasualties.org - a lefty anti-war site, btw - for one set of easily accessible numbers. The spiral into "civil war" that was the first Democrat talking point for several months has been reversed. And the idea that the Surge consisted of standing around will come as a huge surprise to some units - especially Special Forces - engaged in by far the highest operational tempos in their history.

"If we were 'winning,' one would expect the rate of bad-guy killing to increase while the rate of civilian casualties drops."

Already happened. Winning would be stabilization to the point that commerce and a sense of normalcy spread, Iraqis increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and refugees begin to return home. That's what appears to have been occurring, rather dramatically in many places - though the return of refugees would likely be one of the last steps.

"If we were 'winning,' one would expect the rate of bad-guy killing to increase while the rate of civilian casualties drops."

Therefore:

If both reports of violent crimes and arrests for criminal activity are down it must mean the cops have lost and the criminals have won.

Liberal logic. Gotta love it.

C'mo, can't we even get SMART trolls anymore?

Plank Tonne: So fewer of everybody -- good guys and bad guys -- died in Iraq last month. If we were "winning," one would expect the rate of bad-guy killing to increase while the rate of civilian casualties drops.

Wow. Just when you think libs couldn't say anything more stupid, one comes along and proves you wrong.

Could it be that we're killing fewer militants because there are fewer of them? Perhaps many of them who aren't already taking dirt naps have decided that there just isn't a good future in car bombing. Or maybe Iraqis who were inclined to fight against the government have decided to join the winning side. Or maybe the terrorists are just lying low, hoping for the day when the surge ends - or their pals the democrats pull the plug on the war - and they can try again.

One can imagine what Plank Tonne would have written had the news been a bit different:

"US and Iraqi deaths are down, but terrorist death are up. See! That just proves that the surge is a failure!"

Or...

"US and Iraqi deaths are down, but terrorist deaths are up. See! That means that we're killing innocent Iraqis, not terrorists! That just proves that the surge is a failure!"

At times like this, I muse about the evolution of the Benedict Arnolds' "logic" against the war. In the early days, it was that the Iraqis weren't doing enough and not enough were dying, so obviously we had failed. Then, it was that the Iraqis weren't doing enough, and too many of our men were dying, so obviously we had failed. Then, it was that the Iraqis weren't doing enough, and too many of them were dying, so obviously we had failed. Now, it's that not enough terrorists are dying, so obviously we have failed.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that certain people in our country are always looking for an excuse to declare defeat. /sarcasm

Can we question their patriotism NOW?

Looking at the icasualties chart again, here's the thing I wonder. You'll notice that most of the previous months of the "surge" were more violent than 2006 (in some cases much more). So what happened specifically in September to account for the large drop?

While I do think Icasualties' numbers are usually too low (they can only count the violence that's discovered and reported, not the many unreported acts of violence every day), I'm not arguing that September's figures are lower. What I'm saying is that why is it that the surge was a dismal failure throughout the summer and suddenly magically becomes a super-cool success in September?

If the surge were working, we'd have seen a substantial drop in violence from 2006 once the surge forces were in place; since Iraq in fact got worse under the surge, color me skeptical that September's results have much to do with the surge.

And that's not a "gotcha" anti-surge point; it's more that if something is reducing the violence, we need to figure out what it is and keep doing it. And the idea that violence has been reduced by the extra presence of troops doesn't really hold water.

It is very good news and hopefully the trend will continue to the point that other vital work can be carried out. Patreus's truce and follow up support for Sunni insurgents is paying dividends. I also suspect that the flight of millions of Iraqis from various areas of Iraq is also having an effect on the number of sectarian incidents.

Let's hope for more success. The most important work in Iraq still has to be done.

The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says the figures suggest the so-called surge involving 30,000 extra US troops is having some success. ...damning with faint praise.

Those who claimed that Petraeus would misrepresent the truth in Iraq have nothing left of their argument. They never had an argument. It was all bloviating.

We need to keep the pressure on the terrorists and on the Iraqi government, and our congress.

Plank, are you paid to go to conservative-leaning web sites and pretend to be completely at sea, or do you just depend on Think Progress or the Huffington Post or MSNBC for your information?

The surge was announced at the beginning of the year, and proceeded in phases, and incidentally the increase in forces was only one part of a transformation in strategy that had to be implemented over time. All of the surge forces weren't in place until June. Over the course of the year, with large offensive operations undertaken from June through August, Al Qaeda in Iraq has been evicted from all of its urban strongholds; Shiite extremists, and their Iranian suppliers and sponsors, have also been attacked and disrupted; and other forces feeding the insurgency and sectarian war have variously been turned, defeated, or induced to quit the field.

There's still a long way to go, and there's always the danger that progress may be reversed or lost, and there are probably a thousand reasons for the noticeable improvement, but there is little doubt about the bottom line: US strategy under Petraeus correlates with very substantial improvement in the situation, both in absolute terms (casualties, economic activity) and in the sense that the direction of events appears to have been turned 180.

Assuming you're honestly interested in what has occurred in Iraq, you need to start broadening your reading and research.

Plank Tonne: ... if something is reducing the violence, we need to figure out what it is and keep doing it.

Agreed.

Plank Tonne: ... the idea that violence has been reduced by the extra presence of troops doesn't really hold water.

Why not?

Well, where is the correlation between September casualties and the surge? Again, the surge (which started in January, and which conservatives were touting as a "success" as early as April) made Iraq more violent than it was last year.

The idea that an offensive against Al-Qaeda could cause a huge drop in violence makes no sense, since Al-Qaeda is a minor factor in the Iraq violence. So what happened in September to make casualties plunge when they were going up throughout most of the surge?

It seems to me that the best explanation is lexhamfox's: "the flight of millions of Iraqis from various areas of Iraq is also having an effect on the number of sectarian incidents." Essentially the idea of the surge is for us to take credit for ethnic cleansing and a refugee crisis as a "success," and we will declare "victory" once the genocide is complete.

Plank wrote "If the surge were working, we'd have seen a substantial drop in violence from 2006 once the surge forces were in place"

The problem with that is the fact that the surge involved putting US troops into combat which would account for the increase in casualties. If you look at the casualties from May (the start of the surge)-Sept for this year you'll notice a decrease in deaths for every month except August. Tie that in with the other signs of progress and the surge looks like a winning strategy.

CK MacLeod, two fine posts but you are speaking to a machine with limited programing when you address Plank Tom.

Iraqi Christians forced to leave

October 1, 2007

By James Palmer - BAGHDAD — Nabil Comanny and his family endured the dead bodies in the streets, the roaming kidnap gangs and the continuing power failures.

The Christian family stayed in their southern Dora neighborhood after their Muslim neighbors fled the daily fighting between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

But when a hand-scrawled note appeared on their door telling them to convert to Islam, pay $300 a month for "protection" or die, they realized they had to leave their home of 11 years.

"We don't have weapons, and the government doesn't protect us. What else can we do?" said Mr. Comanny, a 37-year-old journalist.

Islamic militants are increasingly targeting Christians, especially here in the capital, forcing an exodus that has cut deeply into the long-standing minority community.

Although meaningful numbers are hard to come by, the last Iraqi census, conducted in 1987, counted 1 million Christians. National aid groups estimate between 300,000 and 600,000 Christians remain today among an estimated 25 million people.

Mr. Comanny said he began to worry last spring when militants posted documents across the neighborhood ordering all residents to follow strict Islamic law. Among the 18 specific points, women were told they must wear all-enveloping black burqas.

"It's not our tradition," Mr. Comanny said. "How can Christian women be expected to do this?"

In the end, most Christian families paid a bribe, Mr. Comanny said, "because it gave them time to prepare to leave. But most can't afford to keep paying."

Mr. Comanny, who shared a small house with his mother, three brothers and four sisters, moved his family on the advice of a "sympathetic" acquaintance among the insurgents.

Because militants in Dora frequently attack families returning home to fetch their belongings, Mr. Comanny paid his insurgent contact 1 million Iraqi dinars, or about $800, for safe passage from the neighborhood.

Today, the Comannys live in the New Baghdad section of the capital, where hundreds of Christian families have relocated. The families move cautiously among a majority Shi'ite population, which relies on the Mahdi Army militia for protection.

Christians in Dora once mixed easily with Muslims, sharing cookies at Christmas and joining Muslims for the daily evening dinner during Ramadan.

Amer Awadish, a 47-year-old taxi driver, said those relationships saved his life.

After a handwritten note was delivered to his apartment in December ordering him and his wife, Samia, to leave within two days, a lifelong neighbor appeared at his door. The man, Mr. Awadish said, advised him to leave immediately.

"This man used to kiss my mother on the forehead in public," Mr. Awadish said, referring to a common gesture of respect toward elderly women. "He was too ashamed to kill me because of that."

Other obstacles to Iraqi Christians are more subtle than direct threats.

William Warda, the founder of Hamorabi, a Christian-led human rights group in Iraq, said most Christians no longer feel safe embracing their former lifestyle.

"They can't drink alcohol, or even dress in the fashion they're accustomed," Mr. Warda said. "Maybe they can stand this for a year or two, but not their whole lives."

Many more would leave the country if they felt there was somewhere to go, he said. "If the U.S. and Europe open their doors, the Christians in Iraq will be finished. They will all leave."

Most Christians in Iraq are Chaldean Catholics who acknowledge the pope's authority but remain independent from the Vatican. Other denominations include Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholics. Small groups of Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics also practice, as do Anglicans and evangelicals.

One common thread among most of the groups is a concern that church leaders have not spoken out to protect their rights.

"The church is not defending us," said Bashar Jamil John, a 24-year-old engineering student at the Baghdad Technical Institute. "This is part of the problem."

Emmanuel Delly, the Chaldean Catholic patriarch who serves as the Vatican's representative in Iraq, declined to be interviewed, but the Rev. Mokhlous Shasha, 32, a first-year priest at the Lady of Our Salvation Syrian Catholic Church in central Baghdad, argued that the clergy are as much in danger as those they serve.

"Priests live in the same situations as their parishioners," said Father Shasha, who added that he never wears his clerical collar into the streets. Since 2006, militants have killed three priests and kidnapped 10 others, church officials said.

Under Sharia Law, in the Iraq Constitution, if your not Muslim, this is your fate. Tell me how this gets better when we leave. Ditto Afghanistan, where a Muslim was on trial for his life. His crime? He converted to Christianity. Ask the Koreans about life in the liberated Afghanistan. Then explain how both countries will get better when were gone.

You're probably right, Burt. See y'all later.

Plank Tonne: Well, where is the correlation between September casualties and the surge? Again, the surge (which started in January, and which conservatives were touting as a "success" as early as April) made Iraq more violent than it was last year.

I think that others have answered your question: the surge didn't start overnight. It's been building momentum since it started, and we are starting to see the dividends. October may be worse, but there is reason to hope that it won't be. Well, reason for SOME of us to hope that it won't be, that is.

Is it possible that there are factors other than the surge that made September a "good" month? Sure. Let's hope that, whatever the factors are, they continue in our favor. But the idea that the surge has little or nothing to do with it is laughable on its face, akin to saying that putting more police officers on the streets won't make the crime rate go down.

Plank Tonne: It seems to me that the best explanation is lexhamfox's: "the flight of millions of Iraqis from various areas of Iraq is also having an effect on the number of sectarian incidents." Essentially the idea of the surge is for us to take credit for ethnic cleansing and a refugee crisis as a "success," and we will declare "victory" once the genocide is complete.

I will restrain the urge to heap scorn on you for this and simply ask that you apply your own logic to this idea. Libs have claimed for some time that "ethnic cleansing" has been going on in Iraq. If so, then why does violence suddenly drop in September? Are we to believe that all the Sunnis moved out in August?

Incidentally, I suggest to lexhamfox that he should try very hard to use a dictionary. The word "genocide" means:

the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group (1)

I realize that libs like to put the worst possible face on the situation in Iraq (like the way they've been hysterically calling the terrorism problem "civil war" for months), but I really don't see how anybody can call what's happening there a "genocide". Quite aside from the fact that there still seem to be quite a lot of Sunnis (I presume they are the victims of the alleged genocide) in Iraq, there is no "deliberate and systematic" plan for their destruction. Except on the part of the terrorists, that is, and we're doing our best to stop them.

------------

(1) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/genocide

OK, my "what happened in September" question has been answered; the drop is likely due to Sadr's cease-fire, which was announced last month.

16 Tonnes said:

"Well, where is the correlation between September casualties and the surge? Again, the surge (which started in January, and which conservatives were touting as a "success" as early as April) made Iraq more violent than it was last year."

Uhm, the surge was ANNOUNCED in January of this year. Supposedly some 90 advance troops did arrive in that month, but the actual surge didn't start almost 2 months later, in late February.

As for one group or another "touting", you might want to remember that as early as April, your side was already saying the surge was a total failure:

"Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop "surge" policy was a failure.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

"As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results," the two leaders wrote.

"The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation."

I'd have Paul Begala fax you some new material, 2 by 4.

DocJim,

I suggest that you read my post again. I never used the term genocide or suggested that millions had died. Millions of Iraqis have fled and many of them have fled because they were warned to leave by sectarian thugs. There are well over two million internally displaced refugees within Iraq who have moved from one area to another for their own safety.

Frankly, I think any reduction of violence is good news regardless of the hows and whys.

Go have an eye test Doc.

lexhamfox:

My apologies. I confused what you wrote with what Plank Tonne wrote. Very sorry about that.

Surge announced in Jan.
Last of surge elements arrived Iraq 15 Jun.
Operation Phantom Thunder commenced 15 Jun with the 3-3ID's arrival.

In parrallel with this the IA has expanded ~35% since Jan.

When you are driving 100mph and hit the breaks, do you stop dead right there? Unless you have hit a concrete wall you will travel further and even with a wall, you will travel, just in a different direction. Momentum is also a military term...

None of the commanders said that results would be instant. They said it would be months. Nothing is instantanious in war. Only the ignorant or foolish believe that war is settled that fast. So which are you? Ignorant, Foolish, or a Propagandist?

There has been a consistent drop in casualties for over two months now. It has finally reached the point where the press has to acknowledge it...

Plank wrote "the drop is likely due to Sadr's cease-fire, which was announced last month." Except for the fact that Sadr only controls men in the Baghdad area and the deaths there have been dropping since June. Try again to explain how the surge doesnt matter.

People: Please don't try to present factual analysis to Plank. Number one, it confuses him, and number two, it is like beating a dead horse. No matter how hard or long you beat him, that horse will NEVER get up and run.

Actually, deaths were increasing since July. This is the first month in a while that deaths have gone down instead of up -- which is to say, the surge was a failure (since it pushed civilian death rates up instead of down) and the sudden drop in September has to be attributed to something else.

----------------------------------------------
Posted by Plank Tonne | October 1, 2007 12:00 PM

OK, my "what happened in September" question has been answered; the drop is likely due to Sadr's cease-fire, which was announced last month.
----------------------------------------------
You need to do more reading (and thinking) and less posting. al Sadr fled to Iran when the Surge was announced. He returned again recently and announced a ceasefire because he wants to remain alive. No doubt his militia is engaging in less sectarian violence but they are also being attrited by American and Iraqi forces.

And yes, some of us who don't rely upon the MSM to tell us what's happening in Iraq did recognize as early as April that the Surge was working.

And unless the Sunnis decide they don't wish to live in the new, more peaceful, Iraq the pacification of Iraq will continue apace. If the Sunnis have accepted their new role in the new Iraq there will be no reason for the sectarian violence to continue. al Qaeda's strategy of provoking sectarian violence is no longer effective- and they are being attrited at a fearsome rate, in the words of Petraeus, - so they too are more concerned with staying alive than killing Americans or civilians.

The Democrats are in for a rough ride in 08.

Falling deaths among bad guys is an indicator ... there are *LESS* of them left, particularly during the aggressive operations of the surge.

Kudos to the US military!

Plank,

Thank you so very, very much for writing exactly what I was thinking after reading Ed's post -- now I don't have to say it.

"The U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing" -- exactly. It's heinous, and you called them on it.

Again, thank you.

Thanks Doc. Appreciated.

Great news -- especially for Hillary, who no longer needs to "suspend disbelief" at reports of progress. Now, she can apologize to General Petraeus for implying that he's a liar. I expect that to happen the same day Murtha apologizes to the Marines he called "cold-blooded murderers".

Winning would be stabilization to the point that commerce and a sense of normalcy spread, Iraqis increasingly take responsibility for their own security, and refugees begin to return home. That's what appears to have been occurring, rather dramatically in many places - though the return of refugees would likely be one of the last steps.

No, that's not what's happening. The number of refugees is increasing, sharply. There are two and a quarter million refugees within Iraq now, and two to three million outside Iraq. And Iraqis continue to flee Iraq at the rate of about 1,000 every day. Jordan has about a million of them. Syria has close to two million. The rest are scattered throughout the Arab countries. And according to dispossessed Iraqis themselves, they are not going back ever. If they go back, they'll be killed. That's what happens to Iraqis who stay in Iraq. Read the article in the current Boston Review. It's very eye-opening.

"The U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing"

I see we're changing the meaning of the terms ethnic cleansing and genocide because it suits someone's political purpose. Well, hell, why not, who says words have to have a particular meaning? As long as it gets your favorite candidate elected in '08, hmm?

If the surge was a failure, the democrat party would be aggressively working to cut funding for this war and get out.

Instead, the democrat front-runners are backtracking and are no longer calling for immediate withdrawal.

Democrat candidate stump speeches are a lagging indicator of popular sentiment, so the fact that democrats have given up on ending the war tells me that Americans are solidly on the President's side.

Parse the statistics all you want, the facts suggest that once again, the democrat party was on the wrong side of history.

Working purely from common sense, I would expect to see casualties of all kinds increase at the beginning of an offensive as troops meet the enemy more often, followed by a sharp decrease as one side gained adecisive advantage and the other side was either dead or trying to avoid combat they couldn't win anymore.

The refugee problem is a good point. I might also point out that wars are won mostly be convincing the enemy that he cannot win, not by slaughtering them (though that helps encourage the survivors to quit), so it is wise not to get too hung up on casualty figures.

The best way to judge the massive success of the surge is the complete lack of coverage by the MSM. Anyone see any MSM stories in the last week (or two or three) about suicide bombers in Iraq? How about US military casualties? All you see now on the nightly news is garbage about the goofiness in hollywood.

Gotta love the resident lefties on this site shifting them goalposts every few days. The law of diminishing returns will forever haunt this twisted incarnation of the democratic party. I truly feel for all you members that have to live with your always negative, cowardly, traitorous views of our country - nothing positive will come of democrats in power, just slavery to the elites.

PLANK TONNE SAYS: "If the surge were working, we'd have seen a substantial drop in violence from 2006 once the surge forces were in place; since Iraq in fact got worse under the surge, color me skeptical that September's results have much to do with the surge"
----------------------------------------
KW64 SAYS: OK let's try this. On D-Day allied Forces in Europe suddenly were in place; yet casualties of Allied and German Forces also rose dramatically. Therefore the D-day invasion was a failure?/sarcasm

No when the forces get in place and take the fight to the enemy, the casualties go up. Just as happened at D-Day.
_____________________________________________
PLANK TONNE SAYS: "Instead what's happening is just that, given that the failed "surge" consists of standing around and letting ethnic cleansing happen, the U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing (that is, violence drops in neighborhoods where we have allowed ethnic cleansing to take place)."
----------------------------
KW64 Says: In June of 1945, the German and Allied casualties were both lower than they were in June 1944 when D-day started. Did this mean that the Allies were just standing around and the German ethnic cleansing of Jews and Gypsies etc. meant there was not any sectarian fighting anymore.

No, this meant that the D-Day surge succeeded because the war was over in Europe by June of 1945. Casualties in Iraq are down because the enemy is recognizing they are getting beaten and are quiting, retreating and even switching sides.
________________________________

PLANK TONNE SAYS: OK, my "what happened in September" question has been answered; the drop is likely due to Sadr's cease-fire, which was announced last month.
--------------------------------

KW64 SAYS: Gee Maybe the Germans decided to surrender in WWII because they were getting killed after the D-Day invasion. And maybe Sadr told his troops to quit fighting because they were getting killed after the surge and if they kept it up they were going to get wiped out and Sadr would not have any leverage on the future political situation anymore.

Is a military manuever a failure if it causes the enemy to quit fighting?

(Did you take the name PLANK because you need to be hit in the head with a board to get an idea into your head?)

Every day now, I hear or read at least one quote that stuns me with its olympian stupidity.

The director of "The Kingdom" said he wanted to make a rollicking action movie with no preaching, but he was upset that test audiences cheered when the Americans killed terrorists. He wanted a more somber reaction.

A poster on another site said that the Iranians are our natural allies in Iraq, because they're fighting al Qaeda. We need to reach out to them and accept their help, which they offer out of their deep respect for us.

The head of the British Royal Air Force is upset that the U.S. is training Arab air forces in preparation for a possible war with Iran. Air Chief Marshal Sir Glen Torpy says that the military will rarely, if ever, be the solution. In essence, the head of the RAF is parroting MoveOn.org and Code Pink.

And here I read that dramatically declining military and civilian casualties in Iraq are a sure sign that we've lost the war.

When you become a leftist, do you agree to have a lobotomy? Do they go in and scoop out your entire neocortex? Is that how it works?

You know, the people who are dead because we're occupying Iraq.

Not, mind you, because the terrorists are killing them. No, they have no moral agency.

Not, mind you, because the former Baathist Sunnis wish to re-establish their dictatorial control over society. No, they too have no moral agency.

Not, mind you, because radical Shi'a wish to get revenge on the Sunnis for decades of oppression. No, no moral agency here either.

No, none of this: It's all because we're there.

By this reasoning, if we leave, then, the terrorists will stop killing them.

Who believes any of this?

SMG

Tom, KW, Steve:

It is a waste of effort to try to argue with liberal trolls. They stick their fingers in their ears and simply repeat disproven liberal mantras. You see this repeatedly with the context of what O'Reilly and Limbaugh said, with the troofers, and now with the surge. They will repeat the same thing no matter how often it is debunked or create extreme contortions in logic with ridiculous jumps to justify their untenable positions.

Save yourselves the frustation.

Of course, I will fail to follow my own advice.

"The U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing"

No, the US is taking credit for preventing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

This article is from the BBC, of all people. It says,

The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says the figures suggest the so-called surge involving 30,000 extra US troops is having some success.

Can't you just read the disappointment that the "so-called surge" is having "so-called success".

Can you realistically say that the ongoing partitioning of Iraq hasn't had a major effect on what's happening on the ground? US forces played an important role in ridding some areas of al Qaeda, but that wasn't the main dynamic at work.

Charles Krauthammer, writer and Fox News conservative commentator, has made this point in the past and recently made it again:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602270.html

As for the idea that invading Iraq has made the US safer by preventing terrorist attacks at home, does that lame idea need to be reincarnated every year? An external front to the war on terror was opened when the US invaded Afghanistan. The invasion of Iraq wasn't necessary for the bad guys to have a place to attack US soldiers outside the US. Iraq became a major terrorist training zone for attacks on Western targets after the US invasion, not before.

Leftists shouting the same old attacks and charges in the American public arena has been the left's modus operandi worldwide since they got their keesters kicked in the streets of post WW I Germany along with Rosa Luxembourg's when her attempted power grab failed and then losing the first elections under the Weimar Constitution.
A band of academic marxist brigands at Frankfurt university known as the Frankfurt School realized the marxist left could not triumph in a modern developed nation unless it first discredited society's values, morals, mores, culture, ideals, heros, and history by smearing it with libelous untrue accusations, disinformation and outright lies.
Even when the left's lies are debunked the totalitarian left know some of their loony words, foul accusations, and libelous filth will be implanted in the minds of the general public acting like a slow toxic drip eating away at countries national self-confidence and assurance.
The tone deaf western left is still playing on the Frankfurt School formulated tactics of fielding insane and outrageous lies and smears 90 years later and will never cease to do so until they are destroyed compltely.
The truth be damned. The left has the destruction of democracy, personal freedoms, a market economy, free thought and speech, and western culture as their goal so that they can institute their delusional marxist visions of an imaginary utopia.
After the Frankfurt hoodlums were sent packing by their fascist rivals in 1933 they up and moved as "professor" refugees to American and British elite universities where they continued to spread their pernicious poison in new fields. We need only look to Columbia University and Yale where today the Frankfurt toxins reign supreme as illustrated with the triumph of their successors on American campuses.
Truth is lies and lies truth for our left who have now allied with the islamofascists in their century long quest to destroy Western Civilization by joinng with those who for fourteen centuries have been seeking to destroy it.

Iraq became a major terrorist training zone for attacks on Western targets after the US invasion, not before.

Given the number of attacks on the West since the invasion of Iraq, they appear to be very slow learners.

When was the last major attack anyway? Madrid?

"The U.S. is taking credit for the results of ethnic cleansing"

Once again the lunatic left can be seen motoring off down the field, with the goalposts protruding from the back of their pickup truck.

There is literally no data which can possibly emerge from Iraq which they cannot plug into a storyline which they find pleasing to themselves.

Fatalities up? That's a sign Iraq is a failure.

Fatalities down? Also a surefire sign that Iraq is a failure.

This all reminds me of global warming somehow ...

884 civilians killed in Iraq last month- probably about the same as in Detroit and DC combined (and in DC there are No Guns-right?)

As for the idea that invading Iraq has made the US safer by preventing terrorist attacks at home, does that lame idea need to be reincarnated every year? Bayam

Wrong, but at least perhaps debatable.

Iraq became a major terrorist training zone for attacks on Western targets after the US invasion, not before. Bayam

Not just wrong but cluelesslly so, demonstrating a profound ignorance of what is happening in Iraq.

training zone !

Try graveyard.

Its leadership has been decimated and, because of its insane tactics which included killing innocent Muslim civilians in an unsuccessful attempt to drive America out of Iraq, al Qaeda is now Enemy Number One in Iraq. Its reputation is now in the toilet, not just in Iraq but throughout most of Arabia.

Iraq owes a great debt to America for being liberated, which it is paying by Iraq being used as the battleground where al Qaeda is being dealt one crippling blow after another.

Maliki Meets New Anbar Awakening Leader
October 1st, 2007 Posted By Pat Dollard.

Baghdad, Oct 1, (VOI) – During his meeting with the leader of the Sunni Anbar Awakening Council, Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stressed his government’s support for the Anbar tribes, a statement released by the premier’s office said on Monday.

“Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the former leader of the council who was killed last month by the evil people in the world, wrote his name into Iraqi history and took responsibility for fighting terrorism,” read the statement that the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) received a copy of.

“The Iraqi government will continue offering all kinds of support to Anbar tribes, which cooperated with our armed forces in purging Anbar’s land (of militants),” the statement quoted al-Maliki as saying.

Addressing the Iraqi prime minister, the current council leader praised the government’s efforts in backing Anbar tribes despite growing pressures from some Iraqi factions to withdraw support for the tribes.

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Obviously these two didn't hear the news that Iraq is embroiled in a neverending civil war. It must be hard to get through life when you don't have access to NYT, WP, LAT, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN ets etc etc.

Ed's post is premature when you take into account the KIA casualties from the previous 8 months of 2007. Ed's post falls into the "maybe things are looking up" catagory.

Considering 5000 troops are to be removed in December, I'd wait to see how things go in Oct/Nov before declaring anything about the extra troop increase and it's effects for 2007.

The U.S. military has placed itself between a rock and a hard place, and Bush isn't helping.

U.S. Military has already stated it can't win in a military manner but is relying on others, (who hate one another), to settle things down to the point where the U.S. feels it can leave.

The big winner in this, no matter how it ends, is Iran. Iran is going to be the dominate player in Iraq, possibly for the rest of the 21st century.

the problem for plank tome is that the deaths that you might most easily subscribe to Al Sadr are execution style deaths but they have been on a steady decline since well before his "ceasefire". Secondly the other big reduction is the mass casualty bombs which are almost always AQI related.

The Surge has worked because it has removed almost all of AQI's safe haven's in Baghdad and its surrounds.

Plank Tomes arguments rely on this nonsense idea that the drop in deaths should have been in an exact lineal relationship with the troop deployments.
This is right up there with the nonsense idea that "you must have an exit strategy" ie that wars are like a civil engineering project with clear discrete milestones.

Plank Tome also needs to understand the troop numbers are only part of the story it is also HOW they are fighting the war now with a proper COIN structure guiding them.