Phony surge spin; The surge is failing

[Thorgrim]

A surge of phony spin on Iraq

Bush's backers are peddling a sunny view of the president's strategy -- despite Iraq's political chaos and soaring death counts.

By Juan Cole

Aug. 7, 2007 | As Congress prepared to go on its August recess, Pentagon officials and White House backers were desperately spinning as a success this year's escalation of U.S. troop levels in Iraq. A recent poll shows that there has been a 10 percent uptick in the proportion of Americans who think the so-called surge, first announced by President George W. Bush in January, is having a beneficial effect. But how accurate are the sunny pronouncements coming out of Washington? What would constitute a success for the surge, and how likely is it to be achieved?

The troop escalation was intended to calm down Baghdad and to give the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki breathing room to pursue a political reconciliation, especially with the Sunni Arab population. But the political goals of the surge are simply not being accomplished -- and indeed, the political situation has deteriorated substantially.

Maliki has lost even the few Sunni Arab allies he began with; the Sunni Arab coalition, called the Iraqi Accord Front, that had actually been in his government has now had its cabinet ministers tender their resignations. He has not held further reconciliation talks with dissident Sunni Arab groups. The Sunni Arab guerrilla groups are thinking of forming an opposition political party in hopes of extending their efforts to topple his government into the political sphere. His relations with Sunni Arab neighbors are so bad that Saudi Arabia declined his request to visit Riyadh.

Developments on other fronts are equally grim. The Maliki government has lost the confidence of three other political parties, the Islamic Virtue Party (15 seats in parliament), the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr (30 seats), and just on Monday, the Iraqi National List led by former appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. All have pulled their ministers from his government. The government of the major province of Basra, source of Iraq's petroleum exports and its major port, has collapsed. The governor, from the Islamic Virtue Party, failed a vote of no confidence by the provincial council, spearheaded by a rival Shiite faction, but he refuses to resign even though Maliki backed his removal. And if Basra collapses socially and with regard to security, it is unlikely that the Baghdad government can survive.

Administration supporters have been upbeat about the way in which some Sunni Arab populations, especially in al-Anbar Province, have turned against the foreign jihadi volunteers that were behind much mindless violence. These jihadis, styled "al-Qaida" by the Bush administration, however, were never the core of the insurgency. Politically speaking, the Sunni Arab Iraqi opposition to the foreign volunteers does not imply that the Sunnis are reconciled to the Maliki government. On the contrary, the Arab press reports substantial support in al-Anbar for the withdrawal by the Iraqi Accord Front from the Maliki government, on the grounds that the prime minister heads a narrow Shiite sectarian regime that holds thousands of innocent Sunnis in prison and has been implicated in Shiite ethnic cleansing of Sunnis.

And what of the supposed "good news" on the military side of the equation? Before July ended, a spate of wire service and newspaper reports began appearing, saying that only 74 U.S. troops had been killed by Iraqi guerrillas that month, the lowest total since November and a sign that the surge was working. But the reporters and editors who gave U.S. headlines such as "U.S. Death Toll in Iraq in July Expected to Be Lowest in '07" (New York Times) were being assiduously spun. Bush officials were undoubtedly pushing the information that produced these headlines in an attempt to give Republicans in Congress some good news to take back to their constituents during the August recess.

In late July, CNN interviewed Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, war propagandist-in-chief in Baghdad, about the casualty numbers, reporting,

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commanding general of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, called the development in recent weeks "an initial positive sign." "This is what we thought would happen once we get control of the real key areas that are controlled by these terrorists," Odierno said at a press conference. At the same time, he said, "I need a bit more time to make an assessment of whether it's a true trend or not."

Odierno's performance was unconvincing to anyone who knew the score. He was speaking on July 24, well before the month had ended. By the time all the casualties were counted and reported (not until early August), icasualties.org was giving the July toll as 80, only one less than in March, during the opening stages of the surge.

Worse, comparisons to previous months in the spring don't take into account the searing summer environment. Baghdad in July is one of those torrid colonial locales of which Noel Coward was speaking in his 1923 song when he wrote that only "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun." The dip in casualties is always substantial in July, since guerrillas usually prefer not to operate with heavy explosives when it is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.

And as a tally noted on Foreign Policy magazine's blog, the number of U.S. troop deaths in July, compared with previous years of the war, is anything but a turn for the better:

July 2003: 48
July 2004: 54
July 2005: 54
July 2006: 43
July 2007: 80

Meanwhile, the statistics for the hapless Iraqis themselves are no less discouraging. According to icasualties.org, the Iraqi civilian and military death toll from political violence in July 2007 was 1,690, a 25 percent increase from the July 2006 number, 1,280. (There was also a 25 percent increase in Iraqi casualties in July 2007 over June 2007, meaning the trend was going in the wrong direction any way you look at it.) These statistics -- bad enough as they are -- are typically understated by a substantial margin because passive tallying by media outlets misses many deaths.

On CNN's "This Week at War" for July 28, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said of Iraq, "I think we have reduced the amount of violence overall, but not to the point where the psychology has fundamentally changed, and Iraqi political leaders are not helping much yet in this process."

But by what measure, exactly, have "we reduced" the "amount of violence"? The continual reports of bombings and casualties in Iraq can have a numbing effect, but consider this: Iraq's population is one-eleventh the size of America's. If people were being killed on a similar scale here, we would have seen more than 18,000 deaths in July alone from bombings and political assassinations. (And this number would not even count ordinary criminal homicides, which are common in Iraq.)


Surely if the troop escalation has been working, then the number of guerrilla attacks must be declining, right? But as recently as June, according to a report by Reuters, daily attacks by guerrillas that month hit an astounding all-time high of 177.8 per day on average. That is, not since May 1, 2003, have there been as many attacks per day as in June 2007, with a total of 5,334. May's total number of attacks was similar, and year to year, the number of attacks in June was 46 percent greater than in June 2006. About 18 percent of the operations in June targeted civilians, and a slightly higher percentage were aimed at Iraqi security forces. The remainder, more than 60 percent, were aimed at U.S. troops (guerrillas launched 3,671 attacks on U.S. troops in June alone, up 7 percent from May).

Guerrillas pulled off numerous horrific bombings throughout July, many of them in central Baghdad under the noses of the U.S. military commanders. On a single day in late July, wire services reported nearly 150 deaths from political violence throughout the country, including three bombings in downtown Baghdad. Recent weeks have seen worrisome political assassinations continue, roiling civil society. Two senior aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani were cut down in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, raising fears that the spiritual leader (who is one of the few forces for peace in the country) might himself be assassinated, sparking a blood bath. On July 10, guerrillas stormed the home of Abdul Hamid Saleh, mayor of the major Sunni city of Samarra north of the capital, and dispatched him. The head of Mosul's election commission was shot to death. On July 26, gunmen in downtown Baghdad rubbed out the general director of the Housing and Construction Ministry. On the 27th, the head of the Lawyers Guild in Basra was assassinated. Sectarian death squads execute an average of 20 residents of Baghdad every day, leaving their corpses in the streets for police to find. The majority of the victims are Sunni Arabs.

Some proponents of the surge may have rightly argued that an effort to take on the guerrillas and militias will produce higher casualties in the short term -- but some of them are also saying the strategy has already begun working and is producing lower casualties and more security for Iraqis, which is a blatant falsehood.

What has surged is not calm or political compromise, but rather the number of guerrilla attacks, the number of U.S. troop deaths compared to the same months in previous years, and the number of Iraqi casualties. That some of the U.S. media and the U.S. public have allowed themselves to be manipulated into thinking the "numbers" from Iraq are a cause for optimism echoes the sloppy and wishful thinking that got U.S. into this mess in the first place.

Iraqi access to electricity and even food and water has fallen, 2 million have been displaced internally and another million abroad since April of 2003. That is not encouraging, to say the least. The "national unity government" of Prime Minister al-Maliki is on the brink of total collapse, as the bad news piles up.

Indeed, the power of positive thinking is an old American value. But sometimes it causes people to fall for pyramid schemes, or even worse.

-Salon members article




I've been reading and reporting this shit forever, but maybe some of you need a good old style list and you can wake up and smell the coffee

If anyone can spin that into "progress" and "good news" you should get a job as human rights spokesman for a third world country's dictator

[Donkey®]

Even I am not blind enough to not notice that more action and more troops = more casualties.

[thatguyoverthere]

Great Post, Thorgrim.



Proud member of the reality based community!

That list of July numbers, comparing them to Julys of years past, is completely devastating.

I honestly don't think any remaining war supporters have the balls to read every word of your highlighted text, much less try and (gasp!) read every word of the whole thing, before attempting a thoughtful assessment and reply. That's too bad, because I would love to read it.

The truth will out. Time will tell. The more people who shine lights on this mess, the better. People will know the real story of what is happening over there.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by thatguyoverthere

Great Post, Thorgrim.



Proud member of the reality based community!

That list of July numbers, comparing them to Julys of years past, is completely devastating.

I honestly don't think any remaining war supporters have the balls to read every word of your highlighted text, much less try and (gasp!) read every word of the whole thing, before attempting a thoughtful assessment and reply. That's too bad, because I would love to read it.

The truth will out. Time will tell. The more people who shine lights on this mess, the better. People will know the real story of what is happening over there.

You're right, after your post this sunk right to the bottom, no one wants to address the facts

[Thorgrim]

BAGHDAD - A powerful roadside bomb on Saturday killed the governor and police chief of a southern province that has seen fierce internal fighting between Shiite factions, officials said.

The bomb struck a convoy carrying the Khalil Jalil Hamza, the governor of the Qadisiyah province, and the provincial police chief home from a funeral service for a tribal sheik at about 5 p.m., army Brig. Gen. Othman al-Farood said.

Bomb kills Iraqi governor, top cop - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

Another set back

[ballz2wallz]

As we sit on our butts, forming opinions based solely on what the media tells us, it's very hard for any of us to determine what is going well or not. How can we from this far away, so disconnected and uninformed, know whether the surge is working or not? How can we know what is really going on in Iraq?

Based on that, the poll options are not sufficient. I pick "I don't know".

[Thorgrim]

These are statistics, Iraqi politicians, people on the ground, etc...and written up by Dr Cole, who teaches Middle Eastern History and Islamic Culture at the University of Michigan

And you treat it like some report from a 20-something reporter who is in a cubicle in DC and heard something on the radio...

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

These are statistics, Iraqi politicians, people on the ground, etc...and written up by Dr Cole, who teaches Middle Eastern History and Islamic Culture at the University of Michigan

And you treat it like some report from a 20-something reporter who is in a cubicle in DC and heard something on the radio...

Funny, cause a lot of people on the ground over there have contradictory statistics and write-ups. Who to believe?

[JaJae]

Evidence of "spin"? The generals and reporters on the ground in Iraq are saying the same thing. And they are also saying politically it's a mess. Nobody is spinning this story from what I can tell.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Evidence of "spin"? The generals and reporters on the ground in Iraq are saying the same thing. And they are also saying politically it's a mess. Nobody is spinning this story from what I can tell.

the title of the article is quite clearly "surge of spin" and it goes on to tell on how the "progress" on the sunni fighters and sectarian difficulties is being spinned

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

Funny, cause a lot of people on the ground over there have contradictory statistics and write-ups. Who to believe?

You have contradictory statistics? Really I'd like to see them, look through the article, read it, and then tell me where there is contradictory statistics

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

the title of the article is quite clearly "surge of spin" and it goes on to tell on how the "progress" on the sunni fighters and sectarian difficulties is being spinned

No actually the anti-semetic blogger made the claim that the surge wasn't working because the politics of Iraq are bad. He also used the immature argument of numbers dead that we see quite common from uninformed bloggers on DailyKos. Just last week he defended Ahmadinejad on his blog saying the leader of Iran doesn't dislike the Jews Wonderful source for proving a point in the Middle East...

The reality is Iraq is still a war zone with sectarian violence. However, just about every person who has been there has said the violence is more contained and Iraq overall is more peaceful. It is not completely better, but it is better than it was. The biggest challenges faced now are the political aspects.

So I guess now it comes down to who should one believe. Just about every reporter who has been to Iraq recently holding a completely different opinion they had before they left. Two anti-war Democratic Senators who recently came back (one of whom just got elected for his anti-Iraq stances). All our generals on the ground...

Or some left-wing nutcase who just recently tried making the case that the President of Iran doesn't dislike Jews? I think I'll scratch this source as being completely incompetent and not one I'd be willing to take seriously.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by JaJae

No actually the anti-semetic blogger make the claim that the surge wasn't working because the politics of Iraq are bad. He also used the immature argument of numbers dead that we see quite common from uninformed bloggers on DailyKos. Just last week he defended Ahmadinejad in an blog posting saying the leader of Iran doesn't dislike the Jews Wonderful source for proving a point in the Middle East...

The reality is Iraq is still a war zone with sectarian violence. However, just about every person who has been there has said the violence is more contained and Iraq overall is more peaceful. It is not completely better, but it is better than it was. The biggest challenges faced now are the political aspects.

He's an active professor who has forgotten more about the middle east than either of us has ever learned

"the reality" is that a very few number of people have said things are getting better, and the president's own lowered benchmarks were failed

ofcourse, I was sure you'd resort to sliming whoever made the best argument against the surge working, I don't know what is more sad, that it's not true or that it has nothing to do with Iraq...

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

He's an active professor who has forgotten more about the middle east than either of us has ever learned

"the reality" is that a very few number of people have said things are getting better, and the president's own lowered benchmarks were failed

ofcourse, I was sure you'd resort to sliming whoever made the best argument against the surge working, I don't know what is more sad, that it's not true or that it has nothing to do with Iraq...

So he knows an anti-semitic with a lot of biased and convoluted information on Middle Eastern history (IE - Ahmadinejad doesn't dislike the Jews). Has he been there recently to make assessments on the current events of the surge? Or is he sitting back at home spouting more uninformed rhetoric? I think I'll take the information that comes from the perspective of the first person over his pathetic blog entries. To each his own I suppose.

[ballz2wallz]

Juan Cole is no unbiased source:

The Crock of Appeasement - by Juan Cole

This guy is as radical as they come, pushed by the very same agenda you push Thogirm

[Thorgrim]

Again, lots of accusations, no links (ballz, yours doesn't count because I don't see anything remotely radical about his article)

I am sure links will follow, with out of context comments

Dr Cole is no more an anti-semite than many of the people on this board who disagree with the right wing politicians in Israel

It's like a British man who didn't like the GOP was suddenly anti-American, or more accurately, he hated all races of people who were not currently in england and english born since medieval times? What a ludicrous thought!

Again, this has nothing to do with any of the statistics or events that are available on many public websites for you to consume...once someone compiles them however, you can't stand it so you break out the slime

[ballz2wallz]

This is like posting articles by Markos and using that as proof of your points.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

This is like posting articles by Markos and using that as proof of your points.

Yeah...we can't trust anyone who doesn't share your views