NEWS: Petraeus Gives the Surge a Passing Grade

POLITICS: Petraeus Gives the Surge a Passing Grade

On Monday General Petraeus, commander of forces in Iraq, testified before congress. He gave his assessment of conditions in Iraq and of the progress Bush's surge plan has made. He prefaced his report by saying

He then went on to say that the surge has, militarily, been successful. You may have heard about the poor marks the surge received from the GAO which reported that the Iraqi government had not met 13 of 18 benchmarks. Fortunately, Petraeus's assessment is based on first hand knowledge and intelligence of the improvements US forces are making and are not based on political benchmarks created to judge the Iraqi government. And despite some very visible attacks in northern Iraq and even on the Iraqi parliament, civilian casualties are down.

The general thinks things are going so well, in fact, that he thinks that troop levels should be decreased.

Now obviously things are not hunky dory in Iraq. The war is losing popularity in America as well as among Iraqis. US soldiers are still losing their lives, Iraqi citizens face violence from insurgents and al Qaeda-Iraq along with shortages in food, electricity, gas, and most of the other things you and I would consider basic necessities. So simply comparing life in Iraq to the pre-surge peak of violence is sort of just saying that things aren't as bad as they possibly could be. But these are moves in the right direction. Security forces are slowly but surely becoming more self sufficient, civilian deaths are down, al Qaeda-Iraq has been pushed out of Baghdad and is severely limited in it's ability to conduct attacks, security in Anbar Province has dramatically increased, and in short, strides are being made. Polls and benchmarks which show that life in Iraq is getting worse all seem evidence to me, that US involvement in Iraq should be extended. Hopefully, Petraeus's assessment and vision forward are correct.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Sorry, Scooter, I wrote this on Saturday.

And generally, when information comes from your own military it is the definition of propaganda.


But, it's cute that you want to believe the General's report that was written by the White House.

"Bush saying he's waiting to see what General Petraeus has to say is a bit like Edgar Derby waiting to see what Charlie McCarthy has to say." - Peter Sagel

Here's how well the surge has worked:

- Number of U.S. soldiers killed, Feb. 1-June 26, 2007: 481

- Number of U.S. soldiers killed, February-June 2006: 292

- Percentage of U.S. deaths from roadside bombs, May 2007: 70.9%

- Percentage of U.S. deaths from roadside bombs, February 2007: 35%

(According to The Nation.)

Well, gosh. This outcome is a complete shock.

(My bold.)

You don't believe this was a war for Iraqis, then?

the thing that not many people mention when the President and the General discuss troop reductions - is that they have no choice. None. This country is out of troops.

So when you hear someone say "we're going to reduce troops" it needs an asterix beside it because its about as honest as a guy that excuses himself from the dinner table saying he's stuffed, after eating everything on the table. It's insane.

hahaha

I'll....

There are only 4 options with Iraq:
1) Leave, ASAP!

2) Keep troop levels at 130,000 and pick a side in the civil war. Give that side our support and make them give us a sweatheart deal on the oil afterward. Yes it will lead to another dictatorship, but is that better or worse than the daily carbombs?

3) Partition.

4) Keep the current mission but increase troop levels to between 350,000 and 500,000. Draft, allies, androids, whatever. Just get a REAL occupying force in there to occupy the damn nation while the government establishes itself. Bush's real failure was denying that we were an occupying force. We were, and there was/is nothing inherintly wrong baout it. Being an occupier was a natural result of hte invasion, and if it had been viewed as a step that needed to be taken, then much of this tradgedy would have been averted.

Too bad Bush does not have the guts to do any of these 4 things. It's not his problem 15 months from now.

Right now I don't have a preference as to which of the 4 solutions. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, but each one is 1000% better than the current situation.

As for Patraeus, well he's being loyal to the white house, instead of the troops. No conspiracy, just a bad decision on his part.

Good post.

FTR ftw

That's not to mention the 12-16 month rotations soldiers are serving now.

That's not to mention we'll simply back to pre-surge troop numbers.

That's not to mention that we still have an unknown but still quite large, 20,000 at least, number of civilian mercernaries who work for private "security" firms, contracted (many via no-bid) to the State and Defense departments.

But you won't hear about that from the President tomorrow night.

Only one option Win

That ship sailed, Rambo.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the fact that Petraeus said he had no idea whether or not the surge has done a single thing to help make America safer let alone Iraq.

Pfft! Oh my god! It's all so simple now.

Ah yes, the question from John Warner (R-VA). Funny how politicians start asking real, non-partisan questions after they've announced they are retiring.

I really, REALLY hope that was a sarcastic statement. What the hell is winning? First you have to decide what the conditions of victory are, which is something Bush has changed at least 4 times, and that's just in the official statements he's made. Then you not only have to achieve those goals, you have to sustain them in the long term. The only option left to any thinking person is to pull our troops out.

Shit, why didn't anyone think of that four years ago?!

Yeah I think he's well aware that what we're doing isn't for America's security. This is already obvious to anyone who hasn't been "Hannitized." Tired of this, "fighting them over there so we don't fight them here," bullshit.

Also, two things.

1) This shouldn't have been so heavily televised. Everyone in there was just showboating for the camera, taking the single most important issue of the nation and turning it into a publicity stunt. It's pathetic.

2) Ted Kennedy shouldn't be allowed to talk.

I had no idea he was retiring, but it doesn't surprise me a bit--a Republican nonetheless. Thanks for the info though.

This video does illustrate something very important though. That's the dichotomy between politics and the military. He is a general who has been given a job. He can answer whether or not X achieves the goals of the job has given, but he can't answer what the effect on politics or larger geo-strategic positions are. He doesn't and for that I have a lot of respect for the man. He just responds to the specific mission he was charged with regardless of the larger implications (which it's not his job to consider).

Here we go agian trying to turn this into another Vet nam. They serve the country am were spit on for doing so when they came home. Please do not degrade the men women of the armed services for serving there country. This effectively is what you do here.

I would suggest you read the blog about the battle for Ramadi, then say nothing is being accomplished.

There is a site called Small Wars Journal, its a useful place for academics and others interested in low level warfare studies. presently posting a blog on that site is half colonel David Kilcullen. he's an Australian Army anthropologist (that's right an army anthropologist, I love the modern military). His posting until recently was as General Petraeus's senior counterinsurgency adviser. His latest blog post is very interesting reading.

Tribal Revolt Blog Post

This even got mainstream coverage in the Sydney Morning Herald today, which is amusing timing, Gods only know how the ignorant pundit who quotes Kilcullen knew about him or the site since I don't think the bitch in question can read. I suspect she was put up to it by the government here.

I find it especially interesting reading between the lines of everything that come out since the Rumsfeld clique has been expelled from the US defence department, which has subtly overturned all the bullshit Rummy forced on the military. Iraq was always winnable (which doesn't mean it was worth winning, see below), it remains winnable. However, the chickenhawk idiots in the Bush administration made sure it was going to be a clusterfuck by making the military do it their way. No doubt they felt their combined histories of dodging service in Vietnam gave them a keen tactical insight into how to wage a military campaign.

The most disastrous point is that regardless of "winning" however, and a point that came clearly in Petraeus's comments, is that Dick and Rummy and co were even worse strategists than they were tacticians. A "victory"in iraq will deliver a victory to iran. Nice move. Even more than that it has distracted from and energised support for Al Quada elsewhere in the Islamic world. The administration morons even turned down the opportunity to use their initial victory to come to an arrangement with iran. And the list goes on and on and on. These fuckers are a class act that will finally displace McNamara & co as the most incompetent administration in military affairs in US history.

Finally I think attacking Petraeus is a bit rich since he was one of the officers whose career was ham strung by Rummy and co for not playing ball with their rose coloured ideological view of what was going to happen in Iraq. making him the whipping boy because he is trying to fix the fuckups of others (now departed for nice, cushy jobs away from the stink) is unfair.