How's the Iraq war really going?

Surge Numbers Show Amazing Progress In Iraq



** Violence in Iraq is down by 50%.
** Civilian casualties in Iraq are down by 60%.
** Baghdad casualties are down by 75%.
** Basra violence is down by 90%.
** Terrorist attacks in Iraq are down by 80%.
** IED attacks down by 55%.
** Average daily attacks down by 42%.

Political reconciliation up by 0%.

The truth is that violence has dropped; if the political progress can keep pace, we could see more success there in the next year.

I remain skeptical, as we've been told before that the corner has been turned... I still have a hard time envisioning the future of Iraq. The lack of clarity about the situation is what leads many to believe that the gains we see are temporary at best.

Cycloptichorn

It has become a tourist paradise for terrorists and Americans

Oh, who cares about that surge nonsense? It doesn't really matter whether they kill more of us or we kill more of them, or whether or not the surge is working. Profit is what matters! Big fat sweaty rolls of cash.

I wonder if I should buy some stock in Halliburton right now. The war should last at least another couple years, right? And even after it's over, Halliburton will still be there fighting for freedom, won't they? Heck, even Jim Cramer says Halliburton's a buy.

War, what is it good for? M-O-N-E-Y.

Well, of course those numbers are meaningless unless you provide some baseline for measurement (which your source doesn't). If we are simply comparing 2007 to 2006, then it appears that Iraq is getting better in some respects, although not in terms of US troop deaths, which, for 2007, already exceed the number of US troops killed in 2006. If we compare 2007 to 2005 or 2004, however, things look like they're getting worse. And if you're just comparing one month's totals with another month's totals, you end up with a skewed picture of the overall situation. One month, after all, does not equal a "trend." The "good" numbers may just be a statistical "blip."

In any event, the defense department's statistics are subject to question. They should be used with due caution. For a wider perspective on the numbers, click here (.pdf).

It does seem to be going better -- but who really knows. It's probably just a lull before the storm and then whammo! This is what happened in Vietnam several weeks before the Tet Offensive.

But even if the war is going well and the American military gets things under control over there, it won't last indefinitely. The United States would have to maintain a strong presence there in perpetuity -- just like in South Korea. It would be wonderful to keep Iraq from coming under radical Islamic control, but the U.S. can't stay there forever trying to keep the lid on the boiling pot. And America is never going to get a drop of that Iraqi oil, no matter what.

Some will recall that the U.S. saved Kuwait from being taken over by Sadaam Hussein. Kuwait showed it's appreciation by piping it's oil right into the OPEC community pot and selling it to the U.S. at OPEC prices, which as of 30 minutes ago was 98.33 cents a barrel and continuing to rise.

Wanna see how much a gallon of premium gasoline (on an average across the nation) will cost in a few weeks at $98.33 a barrel? Divide 98.33 by 22 (22 gallons of gasoline from a barrel of oil). Yikes! $4.46 a gallon! And that's just for gasoline. Everything else trickles up too. Isn't it about time that Americans said to heck with a few endangered minnows and bugs and started to drill and pump it's own abundant supply of oil? Or build some more nuclear power plants?

I would like to believe good news from Iraq... but i can't believe anything I hear that originates from anything connected with bush

Two Coalition troop deaths reported yesterday were revealed today to have been British soldiers. Also today, the U.S. military said that an American soldier was killed in a separate incident. Also, at least XX Iraqis were also killed or found dead and XX more Iraqis were wounded.

A U.S. soldier was killed and three more were wounded in Baghdad during an EFP attack yesterday. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed. Meanwhile, the U.K. military revealed that the two Coalition deaths reported yesterday were British. Erroneous early reports said the pair had been killed in a U.S. helicopter crash. Also, only two more soldiers were wounded, down from an estimated 12 yesterday.

In Baghdad, six decomposed bodies were found buried in Saidiya. Three policemen were injured during a roadside bomb attack in Mansour.

Six people were killed and at least 15 more were wounded during a car bomb

attack outside a courthouse in Ramadi.

In Mosul, a bomb wounded a policeman in the al-Masaref district, while two unidentified bodies were discovered in the al-Senaa al-Qadeema region.

In Sulaimaniya, a bomb wounded the head of Kurdistan's Political Prisoners Association. The device was attached to his car.

U.S. forces killed six suspects and detained 10 others in central and northern Iraq. Four gunmen were killed in Muqdadiya. Thirty people were arrested in Diwaniya. An al-Qaeda leader was arrested in Anbar. Also, police in Baghdad killed one suspect and freed a hostage while detaining another 14; four policemen were wounded.
http://www.antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=11942

I notice nothing has been mentioned about the more than two million Iraqi's who have crossed the border and are now refugees; if the Bush regime had never sanctioned the invasion there would have been no need of a 'surge' ... Nothing will exonerate Bush, all the blood is on his hands!

Then would you believe other sources?

Try these...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7105216.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7089168.stm

So there is at least 2 articles from the BBC that claim that things are getting better.

And on this page...
http://www.iraq.net/

You will find at least 4 stories talking about how much things have improved or how we are getting cooperation fron Syria and Iran.

Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

The methods used in the estimates of Iraqi deaths are the same as those used to estimate the deaths in Darfur, which are widely accepted in the media. They are also consistent with the large numbers of refugees from the violence (estimated at more than four million). There is no reason to disbelieve them, or to accept tallies such as that the Iraq Body Count (73,305 - 84,222), which include only a small proportion of those killed, as an estimate of the overall death toll.

Of course, acknowledging the holocaust in Iraq might change the debate over the war. While Iraqi lives do not count for much in US politics, recognizing that a mass slaughter of this magnitude is taking place could lead to more questions about how this horrible situation came to be. Right now a convenient myth dominates the discussion: the fall of Saddam Hussein simply unleashed a civil war that was waiting to happen, and the violence is all due to Iraqis' inherent hatred of each other.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that the occupation itself - including the strategy of the occupying forces - has played a large role in escalating the violence to holocaust proportions. It is in the nature of such an occupation, where the vast majority of the people are opposed to the occupation and according to polls believe it is right to try and kill the occupiers, to pit one ethnic group against another. This was clear when Shiite troops were sent into Sunni Fallujah in 2004; it is obvious in the nature of the death-squad government, where officials from the highest levels of the Interior Ministry to the lowest ranking police officers - all trained and supported by the US military - have carried out a violent, sectarian mission of "ethnic cleansing." (The largest proportion of the killings in Iraq are from gunfire and executions, not from car bombs). It has become even more obvious in recent months as the United States is now arming both sides of the civil war, including Sunni militias in Anbar province as well as the Shiite government militias.

Is Washington responsible for a holocaust in Iraq? That is the question that almost everyone here wants to avoid. So the holocaust is denied
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18765.htm

At least 13 people were killed and more than 50 wounded by a bomb at a crowded pet market in central Baghdad today, the deadliest attack in the capital for weeks.

The explosion left headless bodies, dead birds and shattered fish tanks around the Ghazil animal market in east Baghdad, where many families of all sects visit one of the most popular attractions in the city on the Muslim day of prayer.

Tension has eased in Baghdad in recent weeks, with American and Iraqi commanders reporting a steep decline in bombings, suicide attacks and militia killings.

However, the bomber today managed to pass police checkpoints and tight security to sneak the explosives into the market, which is in a predominantly Shiite area and is sealed off to most vehicles on Friday mornings.

In more violence today in Iraq, further north in Mosul, a car bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in the Methaq neighborhood, killing five people, including two policemen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

After four long, costly and deadly years, why do American troops still need to be in Iraq, in harm's way, to train more Iraqi troops? After four long years, why are still more American troops and still more American tax dollars still needed to train more Iraqi troops? Why haven't we, at the very least, trained enough Iraqi troops to train other Iraqi troops?

After four long years, why are American tax dollars still needed to equip and supply Iraqi forces? Why, after four long years, aren't Iraqi oil revenues and Iraqi treasury funds paying for Iraqi equipment and Iraqi supplies?

Why have America's leaders allowed so many American lives, limbs and dollars to be continuously sacrificed for the same endless mission? Why have America's veterans organizations so willingly supported such endless stupidity? What a sham! What a shame!

Thomas Austin

Bratenahl, Ohio, Nov. 23, 2007

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To the Editor:

Does anyone but me find it odd that the Bush administration came into office in 2001 planning an unprovoked war in Iraq; spent the next two years building a fraudulent case for launching that war; spent the next four years prolonging that war by making every mistake it could in Iraq while the war cost escalated, billions disappeared and its private contractor supporters grew filthy rich; and only now, when its five-year privatization of the war is suddenly being reined in, has magically developed its very first actual Iraq strategy, which it will finally reveal to us in March, or just in time to influence the November 2008 election?

Since most G.O.P. presidential candidates endorse all this, one would have to note that today's Republicans lend new meaning to the phrase "war profiteering." Judith Balaban Quine

Beverly Hills, Calif., Nov. 23, 2007

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To the Editor:

The information provided in "Foreign Fighters in Iraq Are Tied to Allies of U.S." (front page, Nov. 22) strengthens and adds credibility to the argument that the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq is a failed one. A significant percentage of the insurgent fighters battling American and Iraqi forces has now been identified as Saudi or Libyan.

For at least three years or since the war bogged down and became a quagmire, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their minions have repeatedly insisted that we are in Iraq to defeat homegrown terrorism. It has now been clearly documented that by invading Iraq and occupying the country, the actions taken by the United States have attracted foreign fighters to join the insurgency in an effort to drive the Americans out of Iraq.

The current stronghold of terrorism in Iraq has developed as a direct result of the Bush administration's actions and decisions, not in spite of them as Mr. Bush would have us believe.

The incredible irony here is that two countries that the president and the vice president have lauded as staunch allies in the global war against terrorism have been significant sources of the people who are killing and wounding American troops on a daily basis.

The only strategic course of action that makes political and military sense is to plan and carry out a phased withdrawal of American forces from a country that has become a cauldron of terrorist and insurgent activity and where there is no victory at the end of the road. Alan Safron

Woodcliff Lake, N.J., Nov. 22, 2007

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To the Editor:

Re "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves" (front page, Nov. 20):

Now that it appears that progress is being made in Iraq, let's stanch the notion that Democrats and progressives are going to be unhappy and disappointed. Nothing could be further from the truth from what will amount to a cheap shot that will go out through the conservative echo chamber.

Liberals more than anyone have been sickened by the continuing loss of life and disruption in the lives of everyday Iraqis along with our soldiers and their families, not to mention the damage being done to our economy through this costly and endless occupation. If this success has been brought about by the surge, then the question is, Why wasn't it done sooner? Keith Schmitz

Shorewood, Wis., Nov. 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/l24iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity



12 killed in Baghdad bombings

Iraq is doing fine.
All christians, Muslims, Hindus and a few jews are happy to thank the compassionate commender in chief. supported by noble citizens of USA
Iran awaits after our consumer orgy festival which is named or branded as christmas.

be happy and don't bother yourself.