At the risk of causing death by graph, I’d like to remind us all of the Petraeus Incident last September. It was all about the
Surge and the
Pentagon’s Quarterly Report on Iraq. In looking over the numbers, I produced this version as a graph:
My conclusion was that the
Surge was a misnomer of sorts. The way it looked to me, every time we lowered the troop levels, the violence in Iraq escalated. I saw it as the "Third Surge" and expected that it would slap down the violence just like the others had, but would have no real lasting effect. Now there’s a new
Pentagon Quarterly Report. They changed formats on me, so I couldn’t extend the graphs I had used before. But, indeed, the expected "slap-down" has continued. General Petraeus isn’t much of a stand-up speaker, but he’s apparently a decent soldier. And when given enough soldiers, he can get his job done. Just a few points from this new report:
There are fewer High Profile Attacks in this graph from the report and it does seem to be falling slowly [though very slowly]. There’s another graph in which the break things down into the type of attack:
The overall graph does show a striking fall in the Attack trends. I’m always suspicious of stacked bar graphs, so I took it apart:
While the deconstructed graphs show the same thing, they make the point that I suspected. The attack trends have fallen back to the same levels they were in November 2005, the last time we "surged" – before we reduced the troop levels. This proves a point. Using our current strategy, the only way to decrease violence in Iraq is to maintain troop levels that we cannot chronically maintain. Some fine strategy!
Civilian death rates have dropped over the last year, presumabely as a result of the Surge [or should I say, maintaining an adequate force]. Here are the monthly casualties for American Forces in this War:
Down, but not forgotten [and January seems to be heading back up]. But then there’s this yearly summary of the bottom line:
| YEAR |
U. S. CASUALTIES |
| 2003 |
579 |
| 2004 |
906 |
| 2005 |
897 |
| 2006 |
871 |
| 2007 |
957 |
The thing that sent me looking for this report was hearing Brian Williams say on the news, "Now that things are better in Iraq…" and running across an article that said something like, "Democrats seem determined to spin the Surge as a failure, in spite of…" I went looking for what they were talking about – thus the Pentagon Report. I don’t want to be trying to "spin" the facts to say the Surge didn’t work. Quite the opposite. I would’ve been astounded if it didn’t work in the way they’ve measured it in this report. Send more soldiers to war, the war goes better. We’ve proven that three times in a row.
But I want to review things a bit here. The Iraq War was stalemated. We appointed a Blue Ribbon panel, the Iraq Study Group. They said that "winning" was hopeless and we ought to bow out gracefully. Bush thought about it over the holidays last year, and came out with this Surge idea – push down the violence to allow the Iraqi government to get on it’s feet and take over. Most, if not all of us, saw this as a stalling tactic. So, we’ve had our year. 957 Americans died in Iraq in 2007. Money was spent at an astounding rate. And, at best, we’re where we were two years ago – the last time we tried to lower our troop levels. And now Bush says we should stay for "fifty years." John McCain raised it to a "hundred years." What folly is this! It takes permanent Martial Law to keep Iraqi people from blowing each other [and us] to pieces? That was Saddam Hussein’s approach – and he was more successful and less lethal. There’s only one correct thing to do…
Bring American Soldiers home now!
Did you watch Keith Olbermann’s guest pentagon reporter for the Washington Post Tom Ricks (Fiasco) tell the audience why the surge did not work. I would like people who know this to yell out to the masses that the surge is not working where more will hear it. I want Hillary, Obama, Edwards etc to start saying it to the masses while they have their big audiences. Kind of what Olbermann has on every night called “Bushed” George McGovern did it in the Washington post but this has to be repeated to the masses.
I williamedmond thank we should bring are troops home because it is causeing the goverment to raise our taxes and gas prices.