If you compare each month in 2006 with each month in 2007 with regard to US military deaths, the 2007 picture is dreadful.
8-2007 77 8-2006 65
7-2007 79 7-2006 43
6-2007 101 6-2006 61
5-2007 126 5-2006 69
4-2007 104 4-2006 76
3-2007 81 3-2006 31
2-2007 81 2-2006 55
1-2007 83 1-2006 62
I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?
The report will likely make the claim that political progress is slow but moving forward (the Iraqi parliament only recently returned from their summer vacation, apparently its hot in Baghdad in the summer.)
Crocker will brief that reconstruction efforts are taking hold, again a dubious claim at best, Baghdad has considerable less electricity than prewar levels, the city where I work, Tal Afar i only receives about 1/3 the electricity to power the entire city, so 2/3d's of the day the power is out.
Insurgents and militia's control many of the outer province electrical substations and in many cases have taken them "off the grid" thereby depriving Baghdad of power but giving their constituents power virtually all of the time.
One of the largest dams in the North, holding back 8 billion cubic meters of water is "in danger of imminent collapse." If this damn gives way, the city of Mosul and the American FOB Diamondback will be inundated, is there any doubt that recover and disaster relief operations would be a bit slower than those in New Orleans? I wonder what Mike "heckuva job" Brown is up to these days?
What if General Petraeus simply wrote the following:
Mr. President:Mr. Bush visited Iraq yesterday and stopped in Al Asad, an airbase in the once volatile, always newsworthy al-Anbar province. The al-Anbar has been in the news recently as a success story, local Sunni Tribeman have agreed to stop killing Americans and to focus their violence instead on AlQaeda operatives crossing the Syrian border. But to say that Al Anbar is peaceful and prosperous is simply propaganda. Consider the following:
The United States Army and Marine Corps achieved their principal mission of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his government. We did so with dispatch and minimum loss of life. We were then confronted with a massive insurgency which U.S. civilian officials, including yourself, did not anticipate and for which we have not been given adequate personnel and resources. There is little if any prospect of resolving this insurgency anytime in the next decade, if not longer. Further, continued engagement in Iraq's civil war distracts us from our most urgent mission in Afghanistan and erodes our stature in the world. Therefore, it is my recommendation that all U.S. forces be withdrawn from Iraq in an orderly but expeditious manner. In the event that this recommendation is not accepted, I have attached my letter of resignation from the United States Army.David Petraeus
General, United States Army
- Al-Anbar residents killed 20 US troops in July. The total US fatalities in July were 79. Al-Anbar attacks accounted for fully 1/4 of US deaths for the month, while Al-Anbar residents represent only 1/24th of the total Iraqi population.
- In mid-July, There were about 100 violent attacks in a single week in al-Anbar. That's a bright spot. That's progress. Since the year before, there were 400 violent attacks in that same period.
- Since May, if you wanted to get somewhere in Fallujah, you have had to walk. I submit that it is much easier to control a population if you don't allow them to drive. It is certainly easier to prevent the type of huge VBIEDs that have been decimating the yezidi population in the North.
- Economic recovery, humanitarian aid, and simple recover and clean-up are virtually impossible to affect without large vehicles and construction equipment, let alone not even a pick-up truck or the trunk of a car
IPS quotes a local Sunni cleric:Watch this exchange between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Republican Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA)
' "To say Fallujah is quiet is true, and you can see it in the city streets," said Shiek Salim from the Fallujah Scholars' Council. "The city is practically dead, and the dead are quiet.'
1 comment:
It's the morning after Gen. Petraus's (sp?) talk to Congress. I guess he's not going to submit a letter like this. I'll keep praying that God will help everyone in this confrontation.
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