One hundred U.S. soldiers have died this month and the surge has lead to the most casualties (329) of any quarter since the invasion began in March of 2003.
General Peter Pace said today judging the surge by how many American casualties occur is not a proper measuring stick. Instead, he said: "measuring the level of violence in Iraq a 'self-defeating approach to tracking results' and added, 'What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?'When asked if he actually knew how the Iraqi people currently feel about the U.S. occupation of Iraq he conceded, “I do not have that in my head.”
In a recent survey however, the Iraqis said:
39 percent of Iraqis said they feel their lives are “going well,” compared to 71 percent in November 2005.”
40 percent of Iraqis said the situation in Iraq will be “somewhat or much better” a year from now, compared to 69 percent in November 2005.
26 percent of Iraqis said they feel “very safe” in their neighborhoods, compared to 63 percent in November 2005.
82 percent of Iraqis said they “lack confidence” in coalition forces.
69 percent of Iraqis said coalition forces make “the security situation worse.”
Maybe the "coalition" needs a new measurement by September to keep the war going. Because in September the American people WILL revolt.
2 comments:
When is the war won? can it be won? When do we decide that Iraq is safe enough for us (and the "coalition" forces0 to leave. Will it ever be? Or will we create, like so many sources have stated as very possible, a new Korea? Where we protect from afar, in sand bunkers, out in the dunes? Sci-fi movies couldn't make up a story like Iraq. But learning a little history before you start a war in the most volatile region in the Universe could have done a little good.
Now, of course, hindsight is 20/20. And that is what the Bush admin. wants us to believe: that we got into it, so we need to finish it off to help the Iraqi people, and secure the region. So we should put up with the soldiers dying for an infinite time period. We should continue securing a region that has us as big, obvious targets. That is run by politicians that our Congress is too afraid of its own President to actually hold to any real time lines. How long do Americans have to put up with this farce?
And how many more Iraqis have to die before we realize that maybe the strategy failed. The surge failed. i am not happy that it failed. I am untterly dismayed that so many people die every day in Iraq. But more troops isnt making the situation any better. The Iraqi people have to do that.
First let me admit that the war was ignorant, idiotic, and insane from the word go, and that it's even dumber for us to be there now. Let me nevertheless try to make a case for the surge, and then demolish that case.
If you believe that there might be a sort of quarterly seasonal pattern for US deaths in Iraq, you might look at the fact that deaths between April and June went up 'only' (?) 36% from January through March, while they went up 39% between those two periods in 2006. A small problem for that theory is that casualties between those two periods went up only 5% in 2005. So much for the 'seasonal pattern' 'remember Fallujah' theory.
Clearly, instead of more 'boots on the ground' we've arguably been giving them more 'fish in the barrel.' Indeed, most pro-war nuts and Rumsfeld-hating leftists (and pathetic neos still trying to justify their moronic war) need to realize that Rumsfeld probably picked a casualty MINIMIZING number of 150,000 troops (given that we didn't HAVE a million troops) that was a number merely intended to 'hold down the fort' until we could get Iraqi forces trained. Rumsfeld's mistake came in not realizing that Bush's real goal was not a stable Iraq but high oil prices so as to enrich himself, his mistress Conartista Rice, Cheney, and of course the oil-rich Saudis and British. Hence our deliberate failure to train Iraqi forces to replace ours.
Rummy was probably justified in firing Shinseki. 300,000 was probably a US casualty MAXIMIZING number. Beyond that figure, more troops would have brought the casualties down so that at 450,000 troops we'd have had the same casualties we have now, but at three times the expense. ONLY beyond a figure of 450,000 would we probably be having LOWER casualties than we have now, and at about a million troops (the same number the Soviets had in East Germany, a nation which was of comparable population to Iraq) we'd have had no casualties at all. BUT WE DIDN'T HAVE 450,000 troops, MUCH LESS a million, or even 300,000.
This war is idiotic, insane, and ignorant, and the Surge is a maraschino cherry on a doo-doo sundae. Will GOP chameleon Mitt Romney or perhaps sincere true believer Huckabee have the brains to repudiate the Bush Administration? If not, and if Ron Paul is not nominated, the GOP nominee can kiss it goodbye to whatever randomly selected Democrat is nominated. That's what Lugar and Voinovich were saying this week without really coming out and saying it.
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