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Bug's Life and "The Surge"
I have a child with autism who enjoys watching certain sections of videos repeatedly. He really likes it when I mimic the voices of the characters in the videos. There is a section in Bug's Life where one of the ants asks the question, "You mean to tell me that our entire defensive strategy was concocted by clowns....(later in the the same dialogue Flick says, "The bird will work!" If you substitute Surge for Bird and McCain for Flick you have the McSame storyline.
Let's look at the Gallup poll out yesterday that showed that a significantly larger percentage of Americans believe the surge has worked. The number has more than doubled from a few months ago. The media never mentions one or two important components of that success. I will.
1. (From Factcheck.org) We are paying Iraqis, some of whom were formerly hostile insurgents, to police areas and fight terrorists.
In late 2006, some Sunni Iraqis began to turn against foreign terrorist groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq. This is generally referred to as the Sunni Awakening or the Anbar Awakening. The U.S. military acted on this trend, according to the Congressional Research Service:
CRS: In the course of the “troop surge,” U.S. commanders have taken advantage of this Awakening trend by turning over informal security responsibility to 91,000 former militants called “Concerned Local Citizens” (CLC’s) or “Sons of Iraq” in exchange for an end to their anti-U.S. operations.But the Army says that these individuals are not merely sitting idle. Commanding General of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq David Petraeus elaborated on their role in his testimony to Congress in April, saying the Sons of Iraq are "under contract to help Coalition and Iraqi Forces protect their neighborhoods and secure infrastructure and roads." He went on to say that they have "contributed to the discovery of improvised explosive devices and weapons and explosives caches."
And of course, these contracts come at a cost. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. is paying about $16 million dollars a month to members of the Sons of Iraq. Petraeus emphasized during his testimony that the "savings in vehicles not lost because of reduced violence — not to mention the priceless lives saved — have far outweighed the cost of their monthly contracts."
Nonetheless, there is movement to shift these costs to the Iraqi government. In May, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a measure prohibiting the U.S. from funding reconstruction efforts, such as the Sons of Iraq, that cost more than $2 million. And Petraeus says that "over 21,000 [members of the forces] have already been accepted into the Police or Army or other government jobs" and moved over to their payroll.
2. Using statistics to lie. .. I've recently read but can't find the original reference to the pentagon's report omitting the number of people (US soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians) killed by IEDs from the number of combat related deaths. OF course the surge worked we're not getting shot at we're just getting blown up. IEDs aren't combat related deaths or casualties. Tell that to the families of dead soldiers and those soldiers who survived their IED injuries. If any one out there would like to help with that reference please do so. I'll find it eventually.
Comments (4)
Your assertion that IEDs related deaths are not counted as combat deaths is just wrong. In addition, even if this were true (which it is NOT) the deaths would show up in the totals, which even include disease, heart attacks, accidents, etc. In short, every death is accounted for. It is just a blatant lie to claim that deaths are down because IED related deaths are not counted. A flat out lie.
August 1, 2008 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14801520/
Clearly the fudge and cover up a lot of bad news. That is why the do not let people see any coverage of the coffins of the gallant fallen.
Here is a case of the Pentagon playing games with the Iraq numbers.
updated 1:57 p.m. CT, Tues., Sept. 12, 2006
The American military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks including suicide bombings when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. command said Monday.
The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital Aug. 7 had more than halved the city's murder rate.
But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of "murder" were not made explicit at the time. That led to confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people died violently in and around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.
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The figures raise serious questions about the success of the security operation launched by the U.S.-led coalition. When they released the murder rate figures, U.S. officials and their Iraqi counterparts were eager to show progress in restoring security in Baghdad at a time when Iraq appeared on the verge of civil war.
At the end of August, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, said violence had dropped significantly because of the operation. Caldwell said "attacks in Baghdad were well below the monthly average for July. Since Aug. 7, the murder rate in Baghdad dropped 52 percent from the daily rate for July."
A leading cause of deaths
However, Caldwell did not make the key distinction that the rate he was referring to excluded a significant part of the daily violence in and around the capital. On Monday, for example, at least 20 of the 26 people slain in the capital were killed in bombings.
"These comments were intended to highlight some specific indicators of progress and were never stated in relation to broader casualty figures," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Monday.
He said Caldwell "used murders and executions specifically because they are a key indicator of sectarian-related violence."
August 1, 2008 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should have used Casualties instead of deaths -
FYI-Both the Pentagon and many media reports exclude wounded from their "casualty statistics". They may refer to some wounded soldiers, but then don't have a tally for them. In addition, soldiers injured in "non-hostile" circumstances aren't tallied either. Non-DOD US Government employees, e.g., State Department, aren't tallied either.
August 1, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/26/764/
I knew I read something about car bomb deaths.
August 1, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
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