Republicans have lost the public

Republicans live in some kind of Fox News-fueled fantasy world where it is always 1994. This is how they could look at Bush's 51/49 victory in 2004 and see not only a "landslide", but a "mandate". Most people would look at those numbers and say half of the country opposes you. As Bush slipped to 40% support in the polls, then to 30%, Republicans still went into the 2006 elections believing they would win big. Now, after losing both the House and Senate, a wave of resignations among sitting Congresspeople and Cabinet members, and widespread collective yawning whenever the Decider recites his talking points, Republicans still feel, somehow, that the public supports them. In 2002, a wave of Republicans were elected largely on the basis of being associated with the Bush "team". Any idiot, with the proper evangelical Christian credentials and history of political donations, could read the script and get elected. That was then; this is now.

Those Senators and Representatives who got elected by dropping Bush's name are not in such a good position now. Bush is unpopular, for several reasons. Rather than stand on their own and explain why they are a more qualified candidate than their opponent, they apparently will still cling to the "team" model. In effect, they are asking the electorate to not look very closely at them and vote for the party's plan, of which they are on board. You don't pick up Independents with this kind of campaign, however. The "my opponent is a traitor" message only works with the people who already support you.

As for the war and occupation, all Republicans are offering is more of it, and perhaps a couple new ones. Americans do like to win, but they also like a quick, decisive win. Petraeus is saying ten more years in Iraq, on top of what will be five years when the election rolls around. The WMD, "flypaper", and liberation theses have not gained public acceptance, nor are they likely to. Bush has pushed his talking points weekly, almost daily, and nobody is buying except for the same relatively few people who bought them all along. This is why the false "critics of the war", O'Hanlon and Pollack, were such a media asset; these were people who, allegedly, changed their minds about the occupation and the surge. The truth is, however, that nobody is changing their minds about Iraq. It's virtually fixed in stone, and it's against the Republicans. O'Hanlon and Pollack were supporters of the surge all along, though one of the pair was a "critic" of its relatively small size.

The Petraeus report was going to change all of that. The public was supposed to believe that great progress was being made, and somehow also believe that there was so much progress that we would be staying in Iraq a long time. Data was fixed, statistics doctored, isolated examples were portrayed as if they were the whole story, scary predictions were made, straw men were set up and knocked down, accusations of treason were repeatedly made....but still, no minds were changed. Politically, Bush merely treaded water and held on to the support that he had before the report. All of that effort to get back to where they started, with yet another report due in six months when the same fiasco will be replayed.

Two polls (the article below) show that Bush gained nothing from the September report. And In fact, a poll taken before the report was made, showed that there was deep scepticism of the report's honesty. There was sham "news" of actually letting soldiers whose tours are up return home, and this was presented as a "withdrawal". Ending the surge, which was supposed to be temporary from the outset, was portrayed as a "drawdown". People looked back on what they had expected the surge to accomplish when it was proposed, and what actually had been accomplished. They were not impressed. Americans were again called traitors. Nobody really paid much attention. Stories of scary Islamic bogeymen were employed. America yawned.

There is very little serious consideration by Republicans as to what a post-election situation will mean for their Party. Just like the unwarranted optimism employed throughout the war and occupation, they still think the next report in March will do great things for them. They still believe they have credibility with the public, because all they hear is their own echo chamber of Fox News and talk radio, and that tells them they are on top. And, if Bush actually permits the elections to occur, they will experience a rude awakening when they lose the White House. At this point, it doesn't look as if the Democrats will win a veto-proof majority in the Senate, but who cares if the next President isn't making vetoes?

As for now, the polls are not good for Republicans:


story from CNN

Polls: Bush, Petraeus didn't change public views on Iraq

By Bill Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There were two high-profile media events about Iraq last week: The top U.S. commander testified before Congress and President Bush delivered a prime-time speech. What impact did they have?

Very little, according to two polls taken at the end of the week.

Before the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and the President's speech, 26 percent of Americans polled by CBS News approved of President Bush's handling of Iraq. After the speech, 25 percent approved.

Before the testimony and the speech, 41 percent of Americans believed the United States did the right thing to take military action in Iraq. After the speech, 39 percent said it was the right thing.

The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 4 percent.

President Bush spoke about a "return on success.'' Drawing on General Petraeus' " . . . belief we're succeeding, his belief we will succeed,'' the president asked "the United States Congress to support the troop levels and the strategies I have embraced.''

Democrats were skeptical. "We have now set the bar so low, that modest improvement in what was a completely chaotic situation -- to the point where now we just have the levels of intolerable violence that existed in June of 2006 -- is considered a success, and it's not," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois.

Does the public believe the U.S. troop build-up is making the situation in Iraq better? Before last week, 35 percent of Americans said yes in the CBS News poll. At the end of the week, 31 percent said yes.

A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found 54 percent of Americans want the U.S. to bring its troops home as soon as possible -- that's the same as in July.

The Pew poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 2.5 percent.

President Bush's overall job approval hardly changed. It was 30 percent before the speech and 29 percent after. But the president's rating did jump 15 points among Republicans.

Bottom line? Nothing much changed. The public still wants out of Iraq. But the president's Republican base remains loyal.

Iraqi Army less ready than when the surge started

Fewer Iraqi army and police battalions are ready to operate independently than there were at the start of the year when Bush proposed the surge. The number of Iraqi troops "not ready" has more than tripled since the surge was proposed.

Yet the fundamental crux of the surge was that Iraqi troops would take the lead in kicking in doors and shutting down the sectarian militias. As Bush said the Jan. 10 speech in which he proposed the surge:

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations — conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.
........

Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

And Petraeus' withdrawal plan relies on the Iraqi troops stepping up to the plate, as well. If the plan fails, the result will be another stop-loss. The sole carrot that Petraeus' report offered would vanish. Republicans would be left with nothing but more scary talk, pictures of eagles, and accusations of treason. The best that the Republicans can hope for is a return to the situation that called for the surge in the first place. The White House has a pretty awful record of coming up with best-case scenario results.

Obviously, judging from his Jan. 10 address, Bush thought we could train the Iraqi military quickly enough to take over by the time the September report was due. Now, however, we are rebuked for ever thinking that this could have happened, that this is unrealistic, that it takes time to train the required number of troops.
Why, then, did we base the surge strategy on a fully-trained, fully-manned Iraqi military?

It takes nine weeks to train a U.S. marine. Nine months later, we have fewer Iraqi battalions ready than we had in January. Eh? The answer is that two battalions got killed since then. So this plan hinges on no more Iraqi military casualties? How realistic is that?

Bush said in his September report speech that by December, "our troops will shift from leading operations to partnering with Iraqi forces to eventually overwatching those forces." This is essentially what he said we would be doing in January when he proposed the surge. It failed. It failed, in large part, because the Iraqi military has failed. And now we are going to try using this failed Iraqi military once again to get our troops home.

And so wait we until March, when this whole plan will be trotted out again. Again the plan will be for the Iraqi military to take over for the U.S. troops. Again we will be told that we are "increasing training efforts". Again we will be told that it takes time to build the Iraqi military, and again no one will ask why we thought the Iraqi military would be able to take over if we also thought at the same time that we could not train those troops quickly enough to take over.

full story from the Boston Globe

Petraeus war plan is doubted

Data show Iraqi units unprepared

By Bryan Bender and Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | September 16, 2007

WASHINGTON - Despite his conclusion that Iraqi units can replace US combat troops who will return home by the end of the year, statistics produced by General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, indicate that there are now fewer Iraqi units that can operate independently than there were at the beginning of the year.

As a result, some US and Iraqi officials are skeptical that Petraeus's plan, which gives the Iraqis more responsibility as US troops leave, can actually work.

That plan, they say, is overly optimistic and could jeopardize the fragile gains made in recent months by the "surge" of 30,000 additional troops President Bush sent to Iraq earlier this year. The officials point to the persistent lack of readiness of the Iraqi Army and national police, as well as the fear that many members of the Iraqi forces are more loyal to their sectarian factions than to their own central government.

Iraqi forces "are not ready necessarily to hold areas by themselves that have been cleared out" by American combat troops, said Kenneth Katzman, Middle East specialist at the Congressional Research Service, an arm of Congress. "Whatever gains there were from the surge, I believe they will be eroded. Once US forces are thinned out, the insurgents will regroup."

Some in the US military even argued that the upcoming withdrawal of 20,000 troops, which President Bush announced in a nationwide speech Thursday night, should be postponed until the spring, when Iraqi units might be better able to take on more responsibility, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity and were involved in the deliberations.

The number of Iraqi Army and police battalions considered ready to conduct combat operations without help from the United States has declined from 15 at the beginning of the year to 12 this month, according to data that Petraeus provided to Congress last week.

Though the general was on Capitol Hill as part of two days of intense, high-profile hearings on the progress of the war, the readiness of Iraqi troops received scant attention from Petraeus or lawmakers.

At the same time, Pentagon assessments show that the number of Iraqi battalions considered "not ready" increased from 13 in November 2006 to 43 this past summer.

But the Petraeus plan, which Bush adopted last week, depends on a sufficient number of capable Iraqi units replacing at least 20,000 US combat troops that are set to return home beginning this month.

Bush said in his speech that by December, "our troops will shift from leading operations to partnering with Iraqi forces to eventually overwatching those forces."

Yet many American military officials now acknowledge that when Iraqi forces took the lead in 2006 in a series of operations known as Together Forward I and II, the strategy failed, in part because of abuses committed by largely Shia Muslim Iraqi troops against minority Sunnis and their inability to hold area cleared of insurgents.

"In Together Forward we cleared neighborhoods but had no strategy to hold neighborhoods," said retired Army General Jack Keane, who has been a key adviser to the Bush team on Iraq strategy and was an architect of the surge method. "It has been the problem for the last three plus years. We did the same thing in Fallujah and Samarra and we never had a strategy for protecting the population after we ran the bad guys out."

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

Fred Kagan, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who was also an early proponent of the surge, said that the Petraeus-Bush plan could backfire.

"I think it is possible to reduce forces without jeopardizing our success, but I think we have to acknowledge that it is increasing our risks against the possibility of unforeseen developments," Kagan said.

But Keane said Petraeus and his commanders have assured him that there is a backup plan: stop bringing troops home if the violence increases.

"These forces will be redrawn based on conditions on the ground," Keane said. "If the enemy starts to act in ways we had not foreseen . . . the forces that were to be drawn down will not be drawn down."

Iraq 'progress' kills 10 more police

Well, Bush said "the way forward" would be difficult, but he pretty much meant it would be difficult for everyone else. While the surge was supposed to quell violence in Baghdad, it has not only failed miserably in that regard, but has also 'succeeded' in exporting violence to the areas around Baghdad. Truck bombers blowing up a cop hangout is not a sign of "normalcy", though Bush claims normalcy is returning to Iraq.

Truck bomb kills seven police north of Baghdad

14/09/2007

BAGHDAD, (Reuters) - A suicide bomber rammed a truck laden with explosives into two police cars near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji on Friday, killing at least seven policemen, a police source said.

An official at a joint police and army coordination centre put the death toll at 10, and said he believed it could rise further because identification cards had been found at the scene which did not belong to bodies so far recovered.

The police cars were parked outside a restauraunt, 3 km (two miles) south of Baiji, the official said. He said eight civilians were wounded in the attack.

The bombing took place a day after U.S. President George W. Bush approved a limited U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, but said the U.S. military role will stretch beyond his presidency.

'Progress' kills 21 in Baghdad, Anbar today

I guess since Bush warned us that there would be "difficulties" ahead, Republicans can probably feel justified in brushing away today's Iraqi casualties. Yet, they are ostensibly so deeply concerned about any deaths that would occur should the U.S. withdraw its occupation forces.

Or better still, perhaps there is some secret way that these deaths can be statistically transformed into "non-deaths".

So, 11 more bodies turn up in Baghdad. Who knows if these are sectarian killings, anyway? Let's assume they dropped dead celebrating all of the 'progress'. Five more dead in bombings means we get to shake our fists and curse Al-Qaeda, though nothing in particular indicates they were involved. See, we get to assume whatever suits the Decider's case. That's what makes it patriotic.

And that "Awakening" Bush has been bragging about for almost a year now? It seems that the leader of it, and a few others as well, were killed in a roadside bomb in that peaceful Anbar province. Who could possibly have anticipated something like this? Only those who read the news reports from Iraq, apparently.

Baghdad

4 civilians were killed and 10 injured in a parked can bomb in Talbiyah neighborhood east Baghdad around 11 am.

A civilian was killed and 3 were wounded in a road side bomb in Zayuna neighborhood east Baghdad around 10,30 am.

Police found 11 unidentified bodies in Baghdad today in the following neighborhoods. & bodies were found in Karkh, the western side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (2 bodies in Amil, 2 bodies in Doura, 1 body in Bayaa, 1 body in Hurriyah and 1 body in Mahmoudiyah). 4 bodies were found in Rusafa, the eastern side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (2 bodies in Sadr city and 2 bodies in Qahira.)

Ramadi

Sheikh Sattar Abo Risha, the head of Anbar awakening council was killed in an IED explosion targeted his armed car near his house in Ramadi city today afternoon. Abo Risha's nephew, his aid and two of his guards were killed in the explosion.

Poll says most don't trust Petraeus' report

To hear the testimony of Petraeus today, one would think that we've been in Iraq for four months instead of four years. We've had four years to train the Iraqi police and military. We've had four years to rebuild Iraq. We've been waiting for "progress" for four years now, and all we've really got is Bush asking for more patience. We hear that the surge of 30,000 additional troops has only been in 'full swing" for two months now. What about the 130,000 pre-surge troops?

Likewise, Petraeus' "drawing down" of troops is really nothing more than letting the troops whose tours are over actually go home. We don't have another 30,000 troops to replace them. Apparently, allowing soldiers to leave the military when their contract is up is now called "withdrawal".

Crocker's testimony was the most worthless: We overthrew Saddam, Iraqis voted, Al-Qaeda is bad. There was some vague talk about Iraqi politicians 'starting to work together', but mostly the civil war in Iraq seems to be regarded by Crocker as something created by Al-Qaeda, Syria, and Iran to make Bush look bad. Of all of the people to testify, why Crocker? He has no credibility as part of the Bush Administration, and he is just an ambassador who deals with the fake world of the Green Zone.

Aside from the technicial details of how Petraeus was going to doctor the numbers, it was completely what everyone expected. If you believed Bush before, then it was more of the same. If you doubted Bush before the testimony, then it was more rosy, selective cherry-picking of facts.
It was just one of Bush's press conferences, only with different people reading the script.
It looks like most people didn't expect much more than that, by the article below.
For almost three years now, 60% of Americans have said that the war is not worth fighting. Nothing that was said by Crocker or Petraeus today counters that. Just like the surge itself, Republicans expected big things from the report today, but all they got was the same familiar heads nodding and accusing the majority of the country of treason.


full story from Xinhua

Most Americans skeptical of Iraq status report: poll

Most Americans think the Bush administration's upcoming Iraq status report will exaggerate progress, and few expect it to result in a major shift in the administration's policy, a latest poll found.

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll released here Sunday, underscore the depth of public antipathy toward the Iraq war, the doubts about the administration's policies and the limited confidence in the Iraqi government to meet its commitments to restore civil order.

Most of the poll respondents expected David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, to express a rosier view when beginning to present the Iraq report to the Congress Monday.

Only about four in 10 said they expect the general to give an accurate accounting of the situation in Iraq.

A majority, 53 percent, said they think his report will try to make the situation in Iraq look better than it really is.

Two-thirds of Americans said they believe Bush will hold to his current course no matter what.

Overall, the American public's baseline judgment on the war is little changed -- more than six in 10 said the war is not worth fighting, a sentiment that has been a majority view for nearly three years.

This poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 4 to 7 among a random national sample of 1,002 adults.

Source: Xinhua

Four Marines killed in 'successful' Anbar

Anbar, the sparsely populated province that Bush has been bragging about almost for a year now, was the site of four more Marine's untimely deaths.

Three more dead in Nineveh, which was recently proclaimed to be "pacified".

What a sorry mess. Feel-good reports are seized upon by the neocons as gospel truth, but when the bodies pile up in contradiction, it's always someone else's fault. Four and a half years into this occupation, and we're still propping it up with doctored numbers that, at best, show only marginal improvement. Bush has had a free hand on this occupation, with Congress basically only periodically asking "are you sure this is going well?", but it's still the media's fault or Congress' fault when things don't go the way Bush thought they would.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

U.S. says 7 troops die in Iraq

Americans were killed in two separate actions, military reports

LOS ANGELES TIMES

BAGHDAD, Iraq
Seven U.S. military personnel were reported killed yesterday, and a leading Shiite Muslim cleric started a new round of finger-pointing over who is to blame for recent violence among rival factions of Shiite Muslims in Iraq.
Military officials said that four Marines died Thursday during combat in Iraq’s western Anbar province, which President Bush visited Monday and singled out as the region where the U.S. troop buildup this year has slowed the violence.
The three other American deaths occurred Thursday in the province of Nineveh when military vehicles were attacked with explosives, U.S. officials said.
The names of the dead were withheld pending notification of their families. The latest report brings the total number of U.S. military deaths to 3,760 since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks U.S. military deaths.

Crazy neocons shill for the surge

Behold the delusional world of the neocons! Troop morale is 'through the roof', and the reports from everyone whose job doesn't depend on the Decider's satisfaction are sheer fabrications, at least if you care to drink the Kool-Aid. Things are great in Iraq, or so these shills say, and in another ten years or so things will probably be great enough that we can even leave Iraq.

I think it's interesting to note that the false "surge critic", Michael O'Hanlon, was in on the fun.

All of these people have been continually wrong for the past 4 1/2 years and have been saying that things will turn around in another six months for the past few years. But now you can believe them for some reason. After all, it's not like they've invested their entire careers in the Iraq fiasco...well, actually they have. Sure, Republicans have been saying for the past six months that everything will depend on "Petraeus'" report, but now it seems that we can all ignore it, because these in-the-know neocons have it all figured out on their own.

As long as these bozos are making fools of themselves, why don't they just go all the way and say that we've won and it's over?

POLITICS-US: Neocons Put on a Surge-Stravaganza
By Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Sep 7 (IPS) - With U.S. General David Petraeus's eagerly anticipated final report on Iraq due on Sep. 15, supporters of the troop surge are busily trying to set the stage for the report that they believe will refute their opponents.

The media blitz in Washington is unfolding under the backdrop of dwindling domestic and international support for the ongoing U.S. presence in Iraq.

In a worldwide poll released Friday and conducted by the BBC World Service, GlobeScan and the Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), 67 percent of international respondents and 61 percent of U.S. citizens think the U.S. should withdraw within a year.

Progress in the troop surge has been slow and Petraeus's July interim report found mixed results, with only six of 18 congressional benchmarks for success in Iraq being met.

On Thursday, the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI) -- which has generally supported the George W. Bush administration's decisions in Iraq -- put on a marathon three-and-a-half hour series of panel discussions to promote AEI resident scholar Frederick Kagan's new report, "No Middle Way: The Challenge of Exit Strategies From Iraq".

Kagan challenges another recent report by the Centre for a New American Security, which proposes a phased withdrawal from Iraq and a shift from the current U.S. role of performing security operations to an advisory and support role for the Iraqi police and military.

"...(The CNAS) report, like most middle-way strategies, mistakes the conditions that would make such a transition successful: when basic security has been established. Instead, it suggests than an immediate transition to an advisory role -- driven by hopes for bipartisanship in Washington but irrespective of the security situation in Iraq -- would allow the United States to withdraw most of its combat forces without compromising its interests," writes Kagan. "That conclusion is false."

The "No Middle Way" kickoff included surge-heavyweights such as Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon, retired U.S. Army General Jack Keane and AEI's Danielle Pletka and Gary J. Schmitt.

"Middle Way" proponents, however, did get their say with James N. Miller, the co-author of the CNAS report, titled "Phased Transition: A Responsible Way Forward and Out of Iraq", defending his report in one of the two panel discussions.

The lead-up to the Petraeus report -- which, the LA Times reported, "would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government" -- has fanned the flames of debate over whether the surge is actually having its desired effect.

All the speakers at the AEI event, minus Miller, painted a positive image of post-surge Iraq, citing drops in sectarian violence and the impossibility of starting an immediate phased withdrawal based on timelines instead of improvements on the ground, both political and security related, which, they claim, would only lead to a failure in Iraq.

Meanwhile, public support for the U.S. military presence in Iraq is continuously dwindling. Proponents of the surge point to statistics showing decreases in sectarian bloodshed, but serious questions have been raised about the validity of this data.

Petraeus, in his upcoming report, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks and a 17 percent decline in civilian casualties from December 2006 to August 2007.

However, an Associated Press report last week said that 1,809 civilian deaths occurred in August, making it the highest monthly casualty count this year, with 27,564 civilians killed since the AP began its data collection in April 2005.

Furthermore, a General Accounting Office (GAO) report -- criticised at the "No Middle Way" event -- found that the "average number of daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007."

Kagan, Keen and O'Hanlon discount such dire statistics as not being representative of the Iraq they have witnessed during week-long tours of the country.

Graham summed up the situation as either continuing with the surge and emerging victorious, or choosing a middle ground and facing certain defeat.

"My last visit convinced me more than anything else that the biggest benefit from the surge is to take the men and women on the frontlines and change their attitudes about their mission," said Graham. "They've gone from riding around waiting to be shot to feel like they're kicking their ass. God bless," Graham concluded.

The LA Times suggested on Aug. 25 that morale might not be "sky high" or "through the roof", as Graham claimed in his remarks Thursday.

"The latest in a series of mental health surveys of troops in Iraq, released in May, says 45 percent of the 1,320 soldiers interviewed ranked morale in their unit as low or very low. Seven percent ranked it high or very high," said the LA Times.

(END/2007)

Bush continues to lie about surge's success

So it seems that violence against Iraqi civilians isn't down, that Iraqis continue both to flee the country and also to become internally displaced, that the military is providing questionable figures to "prove success", and that the Iraqi military, aside from its low numbers, continues to have loyalties to sectarian militias.

The surge was supposed to be about quelling the sectarian militias and promoting political stability, not about chasing Al-Qaeda from one city to another and dubbing certain terrorists "good" and others "bad".

The surge has merely produced marginal security improvements in isolated areas that is not even likely to continue after the surge ends. At $12 billion a week, this is not a great value. Add to that, however, that the infrastructure and economy is not improving either and both are continuing disasters. And also consider that the political situation is close to a "failed state" scenario. Anyone besides a Bush cheerleader or in the pay of the Decider can see that the surge is a failure.

story from Mc Clatchy

Report: Surge hasn't cut attacks on Iraqi civilians

By Renee Schoof and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The surge of additional U.S. troops in Iraq has failed to curtail violence against Iraqi civilians, an independent government agency reported Tuesday.
Citing data from the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, the Government Accountability Office found that daily attacks against civilians in Iraq have remained "about the same" since February, when the United States began sending nearly 30,000 additional troops to improve security in Iraq.
The GAO also found that the number of Iraqis fleeing violence in their neighborhoods is increasing, with as many as 100,000 Iraqis a month leaving their homes in search of safety.
The GAO's conclusions contradict repeated assertions by the White House and the Pentagon in advance of the coming congressional debate on whether to stay the course in Iraq or to begin some withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Neither a July report from the White House nor a report last month from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, however, provided any statistics to support their claims that the surge has improved security. The GAO report, in contrast, includes charts showing the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops. Only attacks against U.S. troops have declined in recent weeks.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, U.S. comptroller general David S. Walker, who heads the GAO, said he couldn't vouch for charts that Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., said Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, had shown him during a recent congressional visit to Iraq. Coleman said those charts showed a decrease in violence.
"Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree. So I don't know what Gen. Petraeus is giving you," Walker said.
When President Bush announced in January that he'd dispatch more troops, he said the goal was to cut sectarian violence so the government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki could work out political compromises on key issues among Iraq's rival religious and ethnic groups.
Supporters and opponents of the surge now agree on at least one thing: Maliki has been unable to bring about those agreements. So does the GAO. Its report found that of the 18 benchmarks Iraq's government set for itself, three have been met, four have been partially met and 11 haven't been met.
"Overall, key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," the report said.
The GAO said it couldn't determine whether sectarian violence in Iraq is down "because measuring such violence requires understanding the perpetrator's intent, which may not be known."
But the report said it was possible to assess the overall daily number of attacks against civilians. A chart showed that those attacks have remained relatively constant throughout 2007, despite the additional U.S. troops. The GAO referred a request for precise numbers to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, acknowledged the controversy over the numbers in comments to reporters in Baghdad on Tuesday. But he said that violent incidents in Iraq are at their lowest point in 15 months this week.
"There's been some controversies about civilian casualties," Odierno said. "Ours still see it as below what it was. We think we're making progress."
The GAO said that the Pentagon disagreed with its conclusion that there was no discernable trend in sectarian violence and provided the agency with additional data. But the GAO said it wasn't persuaded and didn't change its conclusion.
The GAO said it did change its assessment of two benchmarks from "not met" in a draft report to "partially met" after it received additional information. Those were whether the Iraqi government had provided three trained and ready brigades to join in Baghdad security operations and whether it had ensured that there were no safe havens for outlaws, regardless of sectarian affiliation.
Walker said that Iraqi forces have made progress in providing some security in Baghdad, but that it's unclear whether they can sustain those gains alone.
"I think there's a serious question whether they on their own will be able to hold these neighborhoods for an extended period of time . . . absent direct U.S. troop involvement," Walker said. "That's probably the $64,000 question."
The report found that many Iraqi military units include fighters with strong sectarian and tribal loyalties, and therefore are unwilling to confront extremist militias.
Walker said it was important to determine not just whether Iraqi forces were ready to fight, but also whether they were "committed to a unified Iraq and committed to fight on that basis."
That kind of loyalty will be hard to achieve until Iraqi politicians reach political reconciliation, Walker said. Currently, he said, the Maliki government is "dysfunctional".
The GAO report also provided evidence to support some analysts' belief that U.S. combat deaths have declined in the past few months because some Iraqi groups have chosen not to face American troops on the battlefield.
U.S. officials had predicted that combat deaths would rise when the surge was at full strength and the U.S. began a series of military offensives. Instead, U.S. combat deaths declined from a high of 120 in May to 55 in August, according to the icasualties.com Web site.
Citing a June 2007 Pentagon document, the GAO report said that many fighters from the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr left Baghdad as the number of U.S. and Iraqi troops there increased. However, it said, "they now engage in ethnic and sectarian violence in northern and central Iraq" and are battling another Shiite militia, the Badr Organization, for control of southern Iraq.
(Leila Fadel in Baghdad contributed.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

GAO: Benchmarks not met

This is the report that the necons have staked everything on, and it isn't looking good.
Let's face it: Republicans expected big things from the surge, and all we've seen is progress on the margins. This is not what $12 billion a week was supposed to buy. This is exactly why Bush and the Republicans didn't object to "all or nothing" standards until now; they thought this would bring "victory" in Iraq.

'Little progress' seen on Iraq goals

The Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush's Iraq War strategy, congressional auditors have determined.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, was due to report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of US troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a September 15 deadline. That's when Bush is to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down the findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, "all or nothing" standards when compiling the document.

The GAO was to give a classified briefing about its findings to lawmakers on Thursday (local time). It is not yet clear when its unclassified report will be released but it is due today amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Bush's plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, where there is now a total of more than 160,000 troops.

Among those Bush will hear from are the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus; and the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. The Pentagon said on Wednesday Bush was likely to get a variety of views from different military officials. Bush will then deliver his own report to Congress by September 15.

The GAO report comes at a pivotal time in the Iraq debate. So far, Republicans have mostly stood by Bush on the war and staved off Democratic demands of troop withdrawals. But in exchange for their support, many GOP members said they wanted to see substantial progress in Iraq by September or else they would call for a new strategy, including possibly a withdrawal of troops.

Democrats are expected this fall to push for another round of votes on their legislation ordering most troops out by spring. A likely target for the debate will be a $147 billion bill the military needs to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The money covers the 2007 budget year, which begins October 1.

The GAO, the congressional watchdog, is expected to find that the Iraqis have met only modest security goals for Baghdad and none of the major political aims such as passage of an oil law.

The White House declined to comment on the specific findings of the GAO report, which one official said would put the Iraqi government's success rate at about 20 percent.

"While we've seen progress in some areas, it would not surprise me that the GAO would make this assessment given the difficult congressionally mandated measurement they had to follow," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council.

An internal White House memorandum, prepared to respond to the GAO findings, says the report will claim the Iraqis have failed on at least 13 benchmarks. It also says the criteria lawmakers set for the report allow no room to report progress, only absolute success or failure.

Source: China Daily/Agencie

Iraqi civilian casualties are up

Iraqi civilian deaths are up. The Bush Administration likes to compare the summer months against the winter months to show a false progress. In the summer, civilan deaths generally go down because it's too hot to go out and slaughter people, so if you compare the summer deaths to the winter deaths you then see a decline.

Any way you slice it, 1800 dead in one month is not stability. It does not inspire confidence in the security situation. And the recent high-profile assasinations are big step backward from last year. Capturing a dozen or so "insurgents" means nothing in the big picture. They will be replaced by others desperate for money or revenge.

I find it ironic that the truce proclaimed by Al-Sadr, the guy that the Bush Administration has portrayed as the most evil villain imaginable, is the current bright spot in the sham parade of good news. Of course, Bush is determined to destroy this bright spot by taking this as an opportunity to arrest those associated with Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, so this will fade into one of those false turning points pretty soon.

More than 1,800 killed in ongoing attacks

Sep 01, 2007 12:07 PM

Associated Press

BAGHDAD – A huge suicide attack in northern Iraq caused civilian deaths to rise slightly in August despite security gains elsewhere, making it the second deadliest month for Iraqis since the U.S. troop buildup began, figures compiled by The Associated Press showed Saturday.

At least 1,809 civilians were killed, compared to 1,760 in July, based on figures compiled from official Iraqi reports.

The August total included 520 people killed in quadruple suicide bombings near the Syrian border on Aug. 14, the deadliest day since the war began in March 2003. The attacks targeted Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect whose members are considered to be blasphemers by Muslim extremists.

U.S. deaths last month remained well below figures from last winter, when the U.S began dispatching 30,000 additional troops to Iraq.

American officials have maintained that violence is declining in Iraq in the run-up to a series of reports to Congress this month that will decide the course of the U.S. military presence here.

The top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, told The Australian newspaper in an interview published Friday that the troop increase has sharply reduced sectarian killings in Baghdad, in particular. Petraeus is expected to make the same point when he reports to Congress in about two weeks.

The U.S. said Saturday that it welcomed an order by the most powerful Shiite militia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, for his Mahdi Army to halt attacks for up to six months so he could reorganize and purge the force of unruly factions that the U.S. maintains are armed and trained by Iran.

"If implemented, Sadr's order holds the prospect of allowing coalition and Iraqi security forces to intensify their focus on al-Qaida-Iraq and on protecting the Iraqi population," the U.S. military said.

Its statement said an end to Mahdi Army violence "would also be an important step in helping Iraqi authorities focus greater attention on achieving the political and economic solutions necessary for progress and less on dealing with criminal activity, sectarian violence, kidnappings, assassinations, and attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces.''

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out raids in Shiite areas, at least some targeting breakaway Mahdi Army factions.

Before daybreak, Iraqi and American forces raided Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of the Mahdi Army. The U.S. military said American troops and Iraqi police were involved in the raid and searched two houses, detaining three suspects. On the way back to base the group was attacked with a roadside bomb but suffered no injuries, Spc. Emily Greene said in an e-mailed statement.

Leaflets scattered around Sadr City urged people to report on Shiite militants who are cooperating with the Iranians, providing a cell phone number and a yahoo.com e-mail address.

"The criminal Iraqis who work with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are toys under Persian control," read one of the leaflets, which pictured a puppet dancing on strings. "Iranian Revolutionary Guards are interfering in Iraq's affairs while Iraqis are dying.''

Iran denies the U.S. claim that it has been arming Shiite extremists, including breakaway Mahdi Army factions which the U.S. refers to as the "special groups.''

In two other Baghdad operations that targeted special groups, eight other suspects were captured, the U.S. military said.

The targets of the operations were leaders believed responsible for helping bring Iranian weapons and other munitions into Iraq, said military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. Troops confiscated three AK-47s, a large sum of Iraqi currency, suspicious documents and photographs during searches of several buildings.

Armed Shiite groups are locked in a struggle for power in Shiite areas of the capital and in the Shiite heartland of the south, which includes major religious shrines and vast oil wealth. Control of the shrines offers not only prestige but access to huge sums of money donated by Shiites from around the world.

As part of that power struggle, gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated Muslim al-Batat, an aide to the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, police said. The attack occurred in Basra, where numerous militias are competing for power. Al-Sistani has called for unity in the majority Shiite community.

In other violence, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and their vehicle destroyed in an afternoon roadside bombing in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Noor Eddin Husein

In several American operations Friday and Saturday, the U.S. military said it had killed seven terrorist suspects and captured 15 others.

The raids included one in the Baghdad neighborhood of Rusafa on Saturday in which the military said it had captured a suspect believed to be a member of al-Qaida in Iraq responsible for security in the area, who is responsible for kidnapping and car-bombing operations.

Surge creates detainee crisis

If and when these innocent detainees ever are released, will they be filled with gratitude towards the U.S. and the Iraqi government? Will they brush aside their torture and let bygones be bygones? Will their families forget the hardships they endured while the men were detained? Perhaps in the crazy delusional world Bush lives in, but not in the real world. Again, we are just postponing huge problems to create the illusion of a short-term "success". And war supporters keep waving flags as some kind of talisman against reality, while dangling a carrot of 'victory' in front of the noses of the public. Well, reality always wins and that carrot is not only moving farther away, but it also appears to be made of styrofoam.

IRAQ: Families of Detainees Losing Hope
By Ali al-Fadhily*

BAGHDAD, Aug 30 (IPS) - Hopes are fading for early release of the large number of Iraqis detained under the so-called surge.

The 'surge' is the new effort by U.S.-led coalition forces to crack down on terror suspects.

The number of detainees held by the U.S. military has increased by more than 50 percent since the U.S. administration announced the surge six months ago, bringing the detainee population to at least 24,500, according to U.S. military officers in Iraq. The officers have said the detainee population was 16,000 in February of this year.

The U.S. military unit in charge of the detention centres in Iraq, Task Force 134, reported Aug. 24 that the average length of detention for all detainees is about a year. It reported also that there are about 800 juveniles held in detention facilities.

Estimates of the total number of Iraqi detainees vary, but most Iraqis believe the number is more than 50,000. According to Iraqi sources, as well as the U.S. military, the vast majority of detainees are Sunni Arabs from the western areas of Iraq. Most of them are detained without any charge or court warrant.

John Sifton, researcher for Human Rights Watch, told reporters Aug. 24 that "the allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody. It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems."

Sifton said Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations "have concerns about a 50 percent increase in detainees because it is 50 percent more people at risk of having been arbitrarily detained or, worse, of being handed over to Iraqi officers who might subject them to torture."

Sifton added that there are no reliable numbers provided by the Iraqi government on the number of detainees, and that the U.S. military will not provide the numbers either.

"My three sons were selling vegetables in Baghdad at the wholesale market when Americans took them away over a year ago," 55-year-old Saadiya from the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad told IPS. "We learned three months later that they were taken to Bucca prison near Basra. They were only farmers, and now they are listed as terrorists just because they are Sunni."

Stories like this are recounted all over the western areas of Iraq, where Sunni Arabs are the dominant population.

"A roadside bomb exploded near our house and killed three Americans," Sumaya, a woman from the Dora area of southwest Baghdad told IPS. "Then American tanks came with hundreds of soldiers and arrested over 30 men from the neighbourhood, including my husband. We were asleep when the blast occurred at 5 am, and it was curfew hours, but they still wanted us to tell them who did it. Now I have to work and feed my four children."

"A force from the Ministry of Interior took 45 men from our village nine months ago and we still do not know their whereabouts," Farhan Abbas told IPS. Abbas is from Youssufiya, 25 km south of Baghdad, and was visiting Baghdad in hope of finding information about the people detained from his neighbourhood.

"We lost hope for them because when we went to the ministry to ask about them, they denied their arrest and told us it must be the militias dressed in uniform," said Abbas. "We argued that the force came in the ministry's vehicles, but they told us to get lost or else they would arrest us too."

Two vice-presidents of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia with the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and Tariq al-Hashimi of the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front, recently visited Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention centre near Baghdad International airport.

Al-Sharqiya television reported that while Mehdi did not talk to detainees, Hashimi talked with several of them at length and promised that their cases would be looked into shortly.

"You are better off here than outside," Hashimi said to the detainees. "It is much safer here than outside, believe me."

"What a wonderful deputy president we have," Ahmad Ali from Ramadi who was visiting Baghdad told IPS. "He thinks people are better off in jail than at home."

The Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from Maliki's government Aug. 1 because several of their demands had not been met. The first was release of at least 80 percent of the detainees who are believed to be innocent.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region) (END/2007)

British general: U.S. Iraq policy "intellectually bankrupt"

Here we see a military opinion from our strongest ally, Britain, that parallels the one domestic critics of the Iraq occupation have been making for years. Bush and Rumsfeld completely bungled post-war Iraq, directly leading to a prolonged and extremely expensive occupation with thousands of military casualties. They then bungled that occupation for years while continually claiming progress that was nothing more than imaginary. Then, after creating an unfathomable mess, the U.S. tried the surge in an effort to correct four years of ineptitude in nine months time. Other than buying Bush nine months to postpone judgment on his failed occupation, the surge has produced only modest progress, and then only in isolated areas. Sectarian killings are up, when compared to last year's levels, Al-Qaeda is merely "off-balance", the Iraqi Police are incompetent, corrupt and disloyal to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi miltary is in perpetual "training" while also being more loyal to the sectarian militias than the government. The Iraqi government itself has been impotent and incompetent since its inception, and now is on the verge of collapse.

This is what we have waited so long for: a marginally-improved disaster at a cost of $12 billion a week.

Britain tried a surge of their own one year ago, and it brought only short-term results. The MOD was wise enough to see the handwriting on the wall and handed over control to the Iraqis. Now they are besieged on their bases and control has shifted to the Iraqis, for better or worse. Bush's response has been to apply the not-so-dreaded "surrenderist" label to their ally.

The surge cannot last much longer than April, since the tours of duty will be over by then for most of the surge troops. Recruiting is down, re-enlistments are down, the junior officers are deserting the military in droves, and the senior officers have staked their careers on pleasing an Administration that their peers in Britain describe as "incompetent". After the surge, then what? Are we then back to the pre-surge non-plan of crossing our fingers and hoping for a miracle? No, the plan at that point is to create another false hope (e.g. Allawi-led government, militia truce, another Iraqi brigade, etc.) that will buy Bush more "wait and see" time until his term expires. And the war supporters will eagerly lap up the next "solution" as the key to "victory", just as they did the surge.

UK general attacks US Iraq policy

The head of the British army during the Iraq invasion has said US post-war policy was "intellectually bankrupt".

In a Daily Telegraph interview, former chief of the general staff, Gen Sir Mike Jackson, added that US strategy had been "short-sighted".

He said former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "one of the most responsible for the current situation".

The Ministry of Defence said Sir Mike was a private citizen who was entitled to express his views.

The US Department of Defense said: "Divergent viewpoints are a hallmark of open, democratic societies."

Sir Mike told the Daily Telegraph that Mr Rumsfeld's claim that US forces "don't do nation-building" was "nonsensical".

He criticised the decision to hand control of planning the administration of Iraq after the war to the Pentagon.

He also described the disbanding of the Iraqi army and security forces after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as "very short-sighted".

"We should have kept the Iraqi security services in being and put them under the command of the coalition," he said.

Mehdi army

The Telegraph reports that in Sir Mike's autobiography Soldier, which is being serialised in the paper, he said the US approach to fighting global terrorism was "inadequate" as it focused on military power rather than diplomacy and nation-building.

In the book, Sir Mike also said Mr Rumsfeld had refused to deploy enough troops to uphold law and order in Iraq and had rejected plans for administering Iraq drawn up by the US State Department, the paper says.

The criticism comes as the US military said an order from radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to his Mehdi army militia to freeze operations for six months would allow coalition forces to concentrate their attentions on al-Qaeda.

A US statement said the instruction would mean fewer kidnappings, killings and attacks.

Sir Mike, who is now retired, also defended the record of British troops in Iraq after claims by US officials that UK forces had failed.

He said: "What has happened in the south, as throughout the rest of Iraq, was that primary responsibility for security would be handed to the Iraqis once the Iraqi authorities and the coalition were satisfied that their state of training and development was appropriate.

"In the south we had responsibility for four provinces. Three of these have been handed over in accordance with that strategy. It remains just in Basra for that to happen."

His comments follow a series of critical remarks from US officials about the British attitude towards Iraq.

'Strain on operation'

US military adviser Gen Jack Keane said last week that American commanders had expressed "frustration" over the prospect of UK withdrawal.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood said Sir Mike's comments may put further strain on the British-US operation in Iraq.

Sir Mike's criticisms were backed by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Conservative foreign secretary and defence secretary.

Sir Malcolm told the BBC: "I think one of the most fundamental criticisms is not just that Rumsfeld was incompetent - which he was - but it was actually his boss, George Bush, who actually made the extraordinary decision to put the Pentagon and Rumsfeld in control of political nation-building after the actual war ended."

A spokeswoman for the US State Department said she would not comment on Sir Mike's views.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said Sir Mike's remarks reinforced his view that British troops should leave Iraq as soon as is practically possible.

He told BBC News 24 that Sir Mike was "a man well known for speaking his mind and not afraid to ruffle American feathers".

Last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote to Mr Campbell, rejecting the Lib Dem leader's call for a timetable for withdrawing UK troops.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/6973618.stm

Published: 2007/09/01 14:58:43 GMT

Re-defining our way to "success"

In the continuing efforts to divide the terrorist sectarian militias into "good" and "bad" camps, we now see that one of the primary tools to bring "success" to Iraq is to simply change definitions of terms. In my previous post, I asked about the definition of the term "insurgent". In the article below we see that the military has changed the definition of one of the sectarian militias in Diyala so that they are no longer "insurgents" at all.

Let's take a look at how one of the "boots on the ground" in Diyala assessed the 1920 Revolution Brigade, as they call themselves:

A Sunni insurgent group we’ve been battling for months, responsible for the death of my friend and numerous attacks, agreed to fight Al Qaeda alongside us. Since then, they’ve grown into a much more organized, lethal force. They use this organization to steal cars and intimidate and torture the local population, or anyone they accuse of being linked to Al Qaeda. The Gestapo of the 21st century, sanctioned by the United States Army.

This assessment from Alex came a mere one week ago. Since they have allied with us for the time being, they are "patriots", not terrorists. Yet, let's look at another of Alex's observations concerning an exchange with one of these "patriots":

For now, our relationship with 1920 is one of mutual distrust and hatred, a sign of the times. A conversation between a member of my platoon and a 1920 source is ripe with foreboding on the future of this partnership, and of the war to come.
“Do you want to kill me?” asked the soldier.
“Yes,” replied the source, coldly and without emotion. “But not today.”

Can you feel the love?
How could this approach possibly fail?
We are now throwing away the possibility of real success for the sake of claiming success over Al-Qaeda, in a process that is merely keeping Al-Qaeda "on the run". We are merely deferring the inevitable conflict with the sectarian militias in order to create a short-term illusion of "progress" against a relatively minor factor in the "big picture" of unrest and instability. Unable to resolve the complex social, ethnic, and political issues creating unrest and instability by solely military means, the senior officers of our military have instead engaged in a "semantics offensive" to re-define our way to victory. We have already witnessed the re-definiton of "success" to exclude car bombings and sectarian militia killings and to include the mere ability to drive Al-Qaeda's violence into other areas. We have already seen Bush "lowering the bar" for "victory" to merely a reduction of violence to pre-surge levels that may or may not even include "democracy" in its definition. Now we are seeing the "elimination" of sectarian militias by merely changing the definition of the words.

Perhaps we should merely re-define the word "corpse" and make some real progress?



full story

What's in a name? U.S. rebrands Iraq ex-insurgents

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces have rebranded one of the main insurgent groups in Iraq and now use the term "concerned local nationals" to refer to a group that once claimed responsibility for killing scores of Americans.

The updated vocabulary for referring to the 1920 Revolution Brigade, described by a U.S. commander on Saturday, is a sign of the abrupt change in tactics that has seen U.S. forces cooperate with former Sunni Arab enemies

The 1920 Revolution Brigade was one of the main anti-American Sunni Arab insurgent groups in Iraq in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has claimed responsibility for killing scores of U.S. troops in ambushes and bomb attacks.

But for the past several months its members have cooperated with U.S. forces to help drive the strict al Qaeda Islamists out of Sunni Arab areas, part of a new U.S. tactic of cooperating with former Sunni Arab foes against al Qaeda.

Colonel David Sutherland, the U.S. commander in Diyala Province, said his men prefer not to call the group by its name.

"The 1920s as they're called, we call them 'the Baquba Guardians', we call them the 'concerned local nationals'," he said. Baquba is the provincial capital.

"These are patriots who have come forward and have joined the security process. They are working with my soldiers and they are working with the Iraqi security forces," he said.

Al Qaeda's adherence to a hardline form of Sunni Islam and indiscriminate attacks has isolated it from Sunni Arabs and nationalist insurgent groups.

Sutherland said the 1920 Revolution Brigade name was now being used widely to refer to local pro-government militia and not anti-American insurgents. Some Shi'ite elders were asking if they too could recruit "1920s," he said, a sign the Sunni Arab group's name was no longer seen as sectarian.

"It has become a name, a catch-all phrase for these concerned local nationals throughout the province," he told a news conference by video link to Baghdad.

His forces "do not deal with terrorists, and if we have information on individuals then we will act accordingly," Sutherland said. "The individuals we are working with.... I have confidence in them and I have confidence in their leadership."

Surge facts, Bush spin

This AP story does an excellent job of sumarising why Bush's weekly radio address is based on false premises and facts. Sectarian killings are double what we saw before the surge was even proposed, life for the average Iraqi is not improving, the "bad" terrorists are simply moving to wherever the surge isn't concentrated, the north and south are increasingly becoming destabilised as the surge concentrates on Baghdad, and the electrical grid that pumps the water for the population is still highly unreliable and not likely to improve.

What do we do when the facts are in contradiction to the Decider's crazy little world? Cue the parrot, of course. "al-Qaeda! al-Qaeda! War on Terror! 9/11! SQUAWK!"

There, now don't you feel better?

There is the "glass half full" optimism, but what we are seeing from Republicans is a glass with a few drops being presented as a full one. And anyone who questions the definition of "full" is unpatriotic and treasonous. This facile tactic has not convinced the 70% who oppose the occupation, but Bush is far past trying to change their minds. He is instead engaged in a bitter struggle to keep the margins of his support from bolting by portraying those who stop reciting the script as "supporters of terrorism". Since the Republicans have staked everything on the success of the occupation, they have little choice but to continue the fantasy. Any signs of dissent from the right will be, like the surge, too little, too late.

full story here

Iraq body count running at double pace

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 47 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - This year's U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago.

Some of the recent bloodshed appears the result of militant fighters drifting into parts of northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives. Baghdad, however, still accounts for slightly more than half of all war-related killings — the same percentage as a year ago, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

The tallies and trends offer a sobering snapshot after an additional 30,000 U.S. troops began campaigns in February to regain control of the Baghdad area. It also highlights one of the major themes expected in next month's Iraq progress report to Congress: some military headway, but extremist factions are far from broken.

In street-level terms, it means life for average Iraqis appears to be even more perilous and unpredictable.

The AP tracking includes Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces killed in attacks such as gunfights and bombings, which are frequently blamed on Sunni suicide strikes. It also includes execution-style killings — largely the work of Shiite death squads.

The figures are considered a minimum based on AP reporting. The actual numbers are likely higher, as many killings go unreported or uncounted. Insurgent deaths are not a part of the Iraqi count.

The findings include:

• Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.

• Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

_According to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the number of displaced Iraqis has more than doubled since the start of the year, from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31.

However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."

He offered no statistics to back his claim, but in a briefing with reporters at the Pentagon on Friday he warned insurgents might try intensify attacks in Iraq to coincide with three milestones: the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., the beginning of Ramadan and the report to Congress.

The U.S. military did not get all the additional American forces into Iraq until June 15, so it would be premature to draw a final statistical picture of the effect of the added troops.

But initial calculations validate fears that the Baghdad crackdown would push militants into districts north of the capital, including Diyala province where U.S. force and Iraqi soldiers have conducted major operation to clear its main city, Baqouba, of al-Qaida in Iraq fighters.

In July, the AP figures show 35 percent of all war-related killings occurred in northern provinces. The figure one year ago was 22 percent.

The final death count for August also will likely be further oriented to the north after the savage Aug. 14 attack by suspected al-Qaida truck bombers near the Syrian border in Ninevah province. At least 500 villagers from the Yazidi sect were killed in the deadliest civilian attack of the war.

In the first months of this year, many extremists fled to Baghdad and regions to the north after Sunni tribesmen in Anbar, the sprawling desert province west of the capital, turned on their erstwhile al-Qaida allies.

Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said many militants are trying to hang onto footholds in central Iraq.

"Most of the force shifts are still in the Baghdad ring and Diyala," he said in a recent interview, predicting more spectacular attacks in the days leading to next month's report to Congress by U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

"Will it lead to more bloody attacks as they try to exploit the American political debate? Yes."

Nora Bensahel, a military analyst at the Rand Corp., said that northern Iraq had become increasingly destabilized over the past few months.

The insurgents have made a "concerted effort to concentrate attacks in other parts of the country," Bensahel said, in part to escape the increased U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and in part to give the impression that no place in Iraq is safe.

Mostly, she said, the insurgents have shifted their focus to the Baghdad suburbs, but they are particularly keen to undermine the notion that northern Iraq is a "success story" for Washington and its key Iraqi partners — including the Kurds who have maintained a near-autonomous state in the north since the early 1990s.

Staging attacks in the north "has a symbolic effect," she said.

And beyond that, Bensahel said the tactic puts the United States in a difficult situation.

"There isn't an ability to move north in any significant numbers without abandoning Baghdad" — a change in strategy that Washington is not prepared to make, she said.

But a huge problem also looms in the south, the center of Shiite political and spiritual influence and the site of Iraq's main oil fields.

There are daily gunbattles between the Mahdi Army militia — loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the powerhouse Shiite political party that controls most of the bureaucracy and police forces in southern Iraq.

This month, the governors of two southern provinces loyal to the Supreme Islamic Council were killed in roadside bombings.

The clashes are expected to grow more intense as Britain draws downs its forces in southern Iraq over the coming months. The effect of the shrinking British presence is already being felt, said Cordesman in an assessment released Aug. 22.

"The end result was to turn the four provinces in southeastern Iraq over to feuding Shiite factions whose actions were mixed with corruption, extortion and links to criminal activities," he wrote.

And there are increasing signs that whole regions of the south are inclined to seek increased autonomy from the center — moves that many Iraqis fear could lead to partition of the country.

In Najaf — the spiritual heart for Shiites around the world — the provincial spokesman, Ahmed Deibel, told AP early this month that the gas turbine generator there had been removed from the national electricity grid. The unilateral action has contributed to several nationwide power blackouts.

He said the provincial plant produced 50 megawatts, while the province needed at least 200 megawatts.

"What we produce is not enough even for us. We disconnected it from the national grid (Aug. 1) because the people in Baghdad were getting too much, leaving little electricity for Najaf," he said.

The Decider speaks to his base, ignores the public

The Decider, in his own words, and in his own little world:

Good morning. This week I traveled to Kansas City to address the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I spoke about the ideological struggle that our Nation faces in the 21st century, and the lessons we can draw from the advance of freedom in Asia in the 20th century. America's enduring presence and perseverance on that continent aided the rise of democracy, helped transform American enemies into American allies, and made our country safer.

Yes, and Bush's remarks were widely ridiculed, including his quotes about Japan which were bitterly denounced by the man he quoted. Of course, Vietnam is not a democracy, nor is Laos. It was not "America's enduring presence" that turned Vietnam from an enemy to an ally; rather, it was the wisdom to withdraw and let the Vietnamese determine thier own course. In the case of Cambodia, the U.S. bombed it into oblivion and supported the overthrow of Prince Norodim Sihanouk in the mistaken belief that they couldn't get anyone worse in power. Instead, the Khmer Rouge stepped up to the plate out the ruins of the generous bombings and began an unparalleled genocide that was only stopped by the invasion of "enemy" Vietnam. In Vietnam itself, the "democracy" that the U.S. backed was one in which only one party was allowed to participate in elections. Opposition parties were summarily imprisoned, executed, and obliterated in Thieu's Vietnam. As it turned out, the communists did not "follow us home". The millions killed in Vietnam died in a civil war, in which the U.S. had the major share as executioner. 16 years in Vietnam only destroyed that country and did nothing to make it an ally or to "make our country safer". No talk of "democracy" in Burma, one will notice.

Next week I will address the members of the American Legion at their annual convention in Reno. In that speech, I will focus on the Middle East and why the rise of a free and democratic Iraq is critical to the future of this vital region and to our Nation's security.

So Bush will again make another speech in front of politically-supportive audience and repeat the same talking points which have brought his credibility to zero. Ho-hum.

I will also provide an update on the developments we are seeing from our new strategy in Iraq. Every month since January, U.S. forces have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists. And in June our troops launched a surge of operations that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against al Qaeda, clear the terrorists out of population centers, and give families in liberated Iraqi cities a safer and more normal life.

And yet Al-Qaeda and "other extremists" seem to have no trouble replacing these numbers.
The "former Sunni insurgents" we are using to wipe out Al-Qaeda are not loyal to the Iraqi government, so we are merely making a lateral move there. And we are using "terrorists" (the Shia militias) to "clear the terrorists out", so it's not really a mark of progress on that score, either. And "families in liberated Iraq" are fleeing the country in record numbers, not feeling "safer" or living "a more normal life". So, no progress on this score. See this post for more facts on the surge's dismal record.

As security improves, more Iraqis are stepping forward to defend their democracy. Young Iraqi men are signing up for the army. Iraqi police are now patrolling the streets. Coalition and Iraqi forces have doubled the number of joint operations. As the Iraqi people feel more secure, they are also forming neighborhood watch groups. They're volunteering important information about the terrorists and extremists hiding in their midst. And the increase in tips helps account for the marked reduction in sectarian murders.

The Iraqi Army is in miserable shape, it is only at a third of the forces Bush anticipated, the Iraqi military and police are not loyal to the government, and sectarian killings are up. More surge facts here.

By driving out the terrorists from cities and neighborhoods, we're creating the conditions for reconciliation -- especially at the local level. In communities across Iraq, citizens are seeing their local and provincial governments return to operation. Despite continuing violence, leaders in places like Anbar, Najaf, and Ninewah are now working through local provincial councils to approve funds to finance the rebuilding of homes and neighborhoods, to fight corruption, and to create new jobs.

In fact, by driving the terrorists (or at least the "terrorists" who don't temporarily ally themselves with us) out, we instead displace the violence to new areas. Petraeus once offered his "balloon analogy", which said that as you apply the pressure in one area, it is merely moved to another area. Any progress that has come in Anbar has come from the militias, not from the government, and the provincial governments are a no-show. Reconstruction efforts are an embarrasing failure. The electricity is on for only a few hours, and serious problems are now obvious in the water-delivery infrastructure. The country is facing a "humaitarian crisis", and the economy is in shambles. That is why 50,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing the country.

Here at home, it can be easy to overlook the bravery shown by Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians who are in the fight for freedom. But our troops on the ground see it every day. Last week, a team of American soldiers was meeting with an Iraqi citizens group near Baghdad. Suddenly, a suicide bomber came running around a corner and headed straight for our soldiers and the Iraqi civilians.

One Iraqi man saw what was happening and ran to intercept the bomber. As he pushed the terrorist away, the bomb detonated -- killing both men, but sparing four American soldiers and eight Iraqi civilians. Army Staff Sergeant Sean Kane is one of those who says he owes his life to this brave Iraqi. Sergeant Kane says, "He could have run behind us or away from us, but he made the decision to sacrifice himself to protect everyone." Sergeant Kane spoke to the Iraqi man's father, who said that even if his son had known the outcome beforehand, he "would not have acted differently."

Great. An Iraqi doesn't want suicide bombers destroying his neighbourhood. Who would? Is Bush seriously floating the idea that someone opposed to the occupation is saying that the Iraqi people want to be blown up? We've thrown 30,000 troops into Iraq to bring stability, and the bombings continue, the sectarian killings continue, and the government crumbles. The point is, that despite what the average Iraqi wants, the surge isn't providing security. It's merely working at the margins and moving violence to once-peaceful areas. And as for those who "overlook the bravery shown by the Iraqi troops", I'd have to point to Rear Adm Fox:
"US commanders warn that Iraqi forces are not ready to handle security alone, in part due to tensions between ordinary Iraqis and police, who the United States says have often been infiltrated by Shiite militia."There is a certain element of the Iraqi security forces and in particular the Iraqi police ... that have had shortfalls in terms of loyalty ... to the central government," Rear Admiral Mark Fox, the top military spokesman in Iraq, told a news conference."

The story does not end there. Later that same night, the citizens group contacted the local director of the National Police and told him the location of the al Qaeda cell believed to be responsible for the attack. The National Police immediately conducted a raid that resulted in four arrests.

Hooray! How many of those who reported this will soon be victims of death squads or Al-Qaeda? The story does not end where Bush left it, either. One can point to citizens reporting crimes here at home, and arrests being made, but nobody suggests that crime can be eliminated. It is only working on the margins.

We are still in the early stages of our new operations. But the success of the past couple of months have shown that conditions on the ground can change -- and they are changing. We cannot expect the new strategy we are carrying out to bring success overnight. But by standing with the Iraqi people as they build their democracy, we will deliver a devastating blow to al Qaeda, we will help provide new hope for millions of people throughout the Middle East, we will gain a friend and ally in the war on terror, and we will make the American people safer.

We have been in Iraq for 4 1/2 years. We have been hearing of "promising progress" for that entire time. The surge doesn't exist in a vacuum. Four years preceded it. Four years of battling Al-Qaeda, killing and arresting "insurgents", even torturing them, did not solve the problem. Al-Qaeda is not "devastated", and if we drive them out, then they will go somewhere else and create new problems in Somalia or Afghanistan. They will come back as soon as the pressure is gone, and they are in fact doing this in areas where the surge has 'succeeded'. The al-Maliki government is cozying up to Iran, as would be expected of a partisan Shiite coalition, and Iran is not an ally in the War On Terror. Provincial elections are stalled. Nobody in the Middle East is looking at Iraq with "hope" or as a positive example of "democracy". Elements within the White House itself are now saying that democracy must be abandoned in Iraq if we are to "succeed". And the primary fear-mongering regarding Americans' safety has come from the White House.

Thank you for listening.

I wish you would try it sometime, Mr. Bush.
No mention of the British in Basra, nor of the collapse of the Iraqi government. Bush promised big things with the surge, and the result is not much more than we had before the surge. Morale is low among the troops, and the Afghan war is not going well. A major PR campaign has not impressed the American public, and Republicans continue to beat away on their old "dissent is treason" line. Bush's base is increasingly isolated and hanging on to a bizarre fear of an imminent Islamic takeover in America that the occupation of Iraq is somehow supposed to be preventing. With a little over a year before elections, and the surge not being able to be maintained beyond April due to a shortage of troops, one must look at what Iraq will look like without the 30,000 occupation troops already there. Will Republicans continue to denounce dissenting troops that return to be "traitors"? How will that square with the "support the troops" mania they have relied on up to now? How long can "moderate" Republicans like Jim Ramstad (my rep, btw) wring their hands and hope for good news before the public sees them as nothing more than tools of an unpopular Administration? Stay tuned.