Visualizations : Civilian Deaths - shows positive effects of surge and tactics change

Looks like the surge is working. The purpose of the surge was to increase security so that the political process would then have a chance to work. Why do some want to quit now, when we are just starting to see progress?

The surge is “working” because the military has greatly tightened its definition of what constitutes a civilian death. For instance, any civilian shot in the head from behind is a legitimate death. But if they are shot from the front? Well, that’s considered criminal, and not counted.

Those recent massive bombings in Qahtaniya that killed over 500 people? Not counted.

So, nice try Dr Goebbels. But even if your data were accurate…shouldn’t we WANT to leave? After all, the surge worked! Deaths are down! Or are we planning to stay in Iraq forever?

Or maybe we should be looking at other measures of success, such as the 18 benchmarks the Iraqi government was supposed to meet, and failed miserably?

Anonymous has joined the despicable Democrats in “moveon.org” and other anti-American leftists in trying to foist the canard on the American people that somehow “the military has greatly tightened its definition of what constitutes a civilian death”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

David Petraeus said that civilian deaths, excluding natural causes, have plunged 45% in Iraq since December, and by a whopping 70% in Baghdad. But the left can’t agree with any good news in Iraq, because they are so invested in defeat. So, they have to make up disgusting attack ads against our men and women in uniform.

“Anonymous” and his moveon.org-like slime job against Petraeus has really put Democratic presidential contenders on the defensive. They want to keep collecting money from kook fringe groups like this, but they can’t admit they agree with them because they know most Americans don’t.

Democrats, particularly Senator Hillary Clinton, did not help themselves in these hearings with Petraeus. Hillary said she had to suspend disbelief when listening to Petraeus. In other words, she couldn’t believe him, he’s lying, he’s not telling the truth. That was a mistake. She was jumped on for that by normal Americans.

Petreas made sense to normal Americans when he described the reality on the ground: that events are going to play out in Iraq, and it can be more or less violent in how it plays out, and we obviously want to see it be less violent. Violence is down because Iraqis are sick of al Qaeda and are teaming with us to drive them out, and violence is down because we have found and cleared over 4,400 caches of arms, ammunition, weapons and so forth (Nearly 1,700 more than all of last year).

After Petraeus was such a powerful witness, without getting excited, without getting ruffled or anything — the scariest words in that speech the president gave to the nation on Thursday night were: Petraeus will be back in march to report to Congress again. If I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t be in favor of that.

So the moveon.org ad accused Petraeus of betraying the country. Petraeus, Betray Us. It’s juvenile, but implies they think that he’s not a loyal American, even though he has all of that salad on his uniform.

The left wing bloggers and moveon.org represent a real strategic threat to the Democratic Party. They provide the Democratic Party with a lot of money. But on the other hand, they exact in return a lot of obedience. And they try to intimidate Democratic Senators. They clog up the phone lines with phone banks. They say that if anybody doesn’t agree with them they face political extinction and so on.

They remind the electorate of Jane Fonda and those Trotsky-like hooligans who used to be at Vietnam demonstrations in those days, and the anti-bomb movement, ban-the-bomb movement and nuclear freeze, Henry Wallace and all of that in the face of the Russians in the Cold War days. I think they are a long-term liability.

The irrefutable documentation was revealed at the Petraeus hearings, which it looks like “anonymous” did not watch. Either that, or she is willing to suspend disbelief in the face of obvious facts. Facts are stubborn things, anonymous:

Security incidents since the surge began in mid-June have fallen in eight of the past 12 weeks. Attacks in the past two weeks were the lowest since April 2006.

Ethnosectarian deaths — basically, deaths resulting from Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish religious and ethnic strife — have plummeted 55% in the same period.

Attacks in once-deadly Anbar Province are off 85% — from 1,350 in October 2006, during the peak of violence there, to just over 200 in August. This is due to the U.S. “hearts and minds” campaign to win Sunnis over to the war against al-Qaida.

U.S. troops have captured the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, killed or captured almost 100 other terrorist leaders, and killed or captured 2,500 fighters over the past eight months.

So, instead of congratulating General Petraeus on their success, lefties from moveon.org and “anonymous” try to put up a smokescreen by talking about bullets to the back or front of someone’s head. But” Civilian deaths, excluding natural causes, have plunged 45% in Iraq since December, and by a whopping 70% in Baghdad.”. That is ALL CIVILIAN DEATHS, not deaths by bullets in the front or back only, or deaths by car bomb, or auto accident!

So Bush and Petreaus are doing exactly what they said they would do. Petraeus literally “wrote the book” on counter-insurgency, and Bush and Petraeus are recommending large decreases in American troops in Iraq, because of the success we have had due to the surge and turning over security to Iraqi forces.

The left comparing great Americans like Petraeus to “Dr. Goebbels” is disgusting, and they will pay for this at the polls. Then “anonymous” exhibits his lack of education and lack of knowledge about what Petraeus actually said. “Anonymous” jumps to the conclusion that “the surge worked, death are down, shouldn’t we pull out completely, or are we planning to stay in Iraq FOREVER!!!”. What a knee-jerk reaction!

Petraeus is a professional, he explained that we CAN reduce our troops significantly in the near future due to the success we are seeing. But he will be back in March 2008 to report on the situation at that time. Petraeus, as a professional military man, rightly cannot make a recommendation now about what should be done beyond mid-July.
Then “anonymous” turned to the tired old canard of the left about the “18 benchmarks”. Again the left is unable to celebrate any success, they continue to just bash America and Iraqis. You can tell by his statements that he did not watch the actual testimony of Ambassador Crocker, who is the expert on the ground and who says success in Iraq is attainable. At the national level, we’re seeing some interesting trends. For the first time, we see Iraqis have a serious discussion about the nature of the state. Sunnis are now talking about a federal Iraq, as well as Shia and Kurds. And this indicates a promising direction for future decision-making.

“Anonymous” is so invested in defeat, he can’t see the success we have had toward the benchmarks: while Iraqis may be having difficulty achieving national benchmarks (complex pieces of national legislation), they’re actually working effectively on the ground to solve immediate problems that have national implications.

For example, in Abu Ghraib, which is just west of Baghdad, the Iraqi government has agreed to bring 1,700 young men into the security forces. They are in training now as policemen. Some of these young men are former members of an insurgent group, Jaish al- Islami. So the fact that the government is prepared to bring them aboard as police is a form of conditional immunity, or amnesty, even if you don’t yet have a full national amnesty, which is one of the benchmarks.

Similarly, while they have agreement in principle on de-Baathification reform, another benchmark (the allowing of more Ba’athists who may have been sort of innocent players in the old Ba’athist government to participate, to come back into the system).

So while that legislative benchmark is not yet achieved, the government has been reaching out to former military officers, many of them Ba’athis, to offer them either reinstatement in the military, a pension, or employment elsewhere in the public sector. So once again, you have got something being done in practice that is not yet attainable as national policy.

What may be the most encouraging is what’s going on in the provinces, as General Petraeus mentioned in the case of Anbar, and how that is starting to link to the center. Again, as General Petraeus noted, you have 21,000 young men out in Anbar, who are now policemen, paid by the central government.

More significant even than that, though, is the fact that the central government is getting financial resources out to the provinces. The economy is working with the government as the distributor of resources. So, again, even without a revenue distribution law — another benchmark — you have the government distributing revenues. And in the case of Anbar, just a few days ago a central government representatives brought out a package to Ramadi, the capital city, an additional $70 million for their capital budget, a 70 percent increase, and $50 million for compensation for damages suffered in the struggle against Al Qaeda.

So we are seeing the center and the provinces start to knit together on an economic as well as a nascent political basis.

So in summary, the surge has just finally gotten started, we are seeing tremendous success, not only on the security front with drastically reduced violence and cooperation with Iraqis against al Qaeda, but on the bottoms up political front, which is being supported by the Iraqi central government.

When General Petreaus was asked what the payoff would be for victory in Iraq, he said “Well, I think an enormous payoff is the fact that we may be able to defeat Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda central, if you will, does regard Iraq as the central front in its war on terror. Our overall commander, who prosecutes the global war on terrorism in the Joint Special Operations Force commander, regards that as the central front.

And so this would be, frankly, an enormous blow to Al Qaeda, if we were able to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The converse of that would be a, really, a huge lift for Al Qaeda, and really, a shot of adrenaline to them.

Tell this to my son and the other members of his unit in Iraq, Mr. Green. Believe me, it’s not working

Anonymous, my nephew says it IS working. Believe me, it IS working! And the facts and statistics speak for themselves. Military and civilian deaths are WAY down. Osama bin Laden has resorted to begging the Sunni’s to come back to him and stop teaming up with the US to defeat al qaeda in Iraq. We are winning, and the left in America just can’t stand it, because they are so politically invested in defeat.

cgreen, why is it that when someone brings up something factual, that doesn’t fit in with a pro-war out-look, the conservative response is to immediately lambast the person bringing up the fact? They have tightened up their definition, and there has been ethnic cleansing.

I have friends who are soldiers. I get both views from them. But I get way more negative feedback than positive about what kind of progress is being made over there.

By the way. Even if they aren’t killing each other as much anymore, doesn’t mean that we’re not breeding the next wave of terrorists. We used to have a beef with a relatively small group of radical islamists. Now that we’ve invaded, we’re just feeding the fire of their recruiting rhetoric.

We should be taking the lesson from our own Bible. The more the early Christians were persecuted, the more the religion flourished.

By the way. Speaking for the Left. We are not politically invested in losing. The Right however is. As long as there is radical islam, there will be violence in Iraq. And the more we meddle with them, the more likely we’re going to have an attack on our homeland. We got in this mess in the first place because of our bases is Saudi Arabia. Do you think that because we have a war over there, that’s going to stop another 20 people from commiting violence here? What we need to be doing is winning hearts and minds. What we’ve done is turn the vast majority of the world against us.