The war that seemed lost...the surge worked!

[NotSoSilentBob]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost

BAGHDAD (AP) "? The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.

Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace "? a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.

Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.

This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press this past week there are early indications that senior leaders of al-Qaida may be considering shifting their main focus from Iraq to the war in Afghanistan.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the AP on Thursday that the insurgency as a whole has withered to the point where it is no longer a threat to Iraq's future.

"Very clearly, the insurgency is in no position to overthrow the government or, really, even to challenge it," Crocker said. "It's actually almost in no position to try to confront it. By and large, what's left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on."

Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring "? now a quiet though not fully secure district.

Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are now in Iran. Still talking of a comeback, they are facing major obstacles, including a loss of support among a Shiite population weary of war and no longer as terrified of Sunni extremists as they were two years ago.

Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.

The premature declaration by the Bush administration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003 convinced commanders that the best public relations strategy is to promise little, and couple all good news with the warning that "security is fragile" and that the improvements, while encouraging, are "not irreversible."

Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shiite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, corruption. Anyone could rekindle widespread fighting.

But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military's hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.

<span style="color: #FF0000">Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war "? four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.</span>

Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.

The questions facing both Americans and Iraqis are: What kinds of help will the country need from the U.S. military, and for how long? The questions will take on greater importance as the U.S. presidential election nears, with one candidate pledging a troop withdrawal and the other insisting on staying.

Iraqi authorities have grown dependent on the U.S. military after more than five years of war. While they are aiming for full sovereignty with no foreign troops on their soil, they do not want to rush. In a similar sense, the Americans fear that after losing more than 4,100 troops, the sacrifice could be squandered.

U.S. commanders say a substantial American military presence will be needed beyond 2009. But judging from the security gains that have been sustained over the first half of this year "? as the Pentagon withdrew five Army brigades sent as reinforcements in 2007 "? the remaining troops could be used as peacekeepers more than combatants.

As a measure of the transitioning U.S. role, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond says that when he took command of American forces in the Baghdad area about seven months ago he was spending 80 percent of his time working on combat-related matters and about 20 percent on what the military calls "nonkinetic" issues, such as supporting the development of Iraqi government institutions and humanitarian aid.

Now Hammond estimates those percentage have been almost reversed. For several hours one recent day, for example, Hammond consulted on water projects with a Sunni sheik in the Radwaniyah area of southwest Baghdad, then spent time with an Iraqi physician/entrepreneur in the Dora district of southern Baghdad "? an area, now calm, that in early 2007 was one of the capital's most violent zones.

"We're getting close to something that looks like an end to mass violence in Iraq," says Stephen Biddle, an analyst at the Council of Foreign Relations who has advised Petraeus on war strategy. Biddle is not ready to say it's over, but he sees the U.S. mission shifting from fighting the insurgents to keeping the peace.

Although Sunni and Shiite extremists are still around, they have surrendered the initiative and have lost the support of many ordinary Iraqis. That can be traced to an altered U.S. approach to countering the insurgency "? a Petraeus-driven move to take more U.S. troops off their big bases and put them in Baghdad neighborhoods where they mixed with ordinary Iraqis and built a new level of trust.

Army Col. Tom James, a brigade commander who is on his third combat tour in Iraq, explains the new calm this way:

"We've put out the forest fire. Now we're dealing with pop-up fires."

It's not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace.

Maj. Gen. Ali Hadi Hussein al-Yaseri, the chief of patrol police in the capital, sees the changes.

"Even eight months ago, Baghdad was not today's Baghdad," he says.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ Robert Burns is AP's chief military reporter, and Robert Reid is AP's chief of bureau in Baghdad. Reid has covered the war from his post in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Burns, based in Washington, has made 21 reporting trips to Iraq; on his latest during July, Burns spent nearly three weeks in central and northern Iraq, observing military operations and interviewing both U.S. and Iraqi officers.</div></div>


"They won't be able to do the deployment. They won't have the equipment. They don't have the training and they won't be able to do the work... This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop this surge."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Rep. John Murtha, D-PA</span>, February, 2006, commenting on his plans to derail the President's plan for a surge in US troops in Iraq.

"The enemy is emboldened by a surge of American troops..."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Sen. Carl Levin, D-MI</span>, March 14, 2007.

"This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything..."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Sen. Maj. Leader Harry Reid, D-NV</span>, April, 19, 2007.

"The Speaker of the House believes that the surge is not working."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Speaker Of The House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA</span>, June 28, 2007.

"The facts are self-evident that the progress is not being made."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Speaker Of The House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA</span>, September 6, 2007.

"Well that would be a real great problem for us, no question about it."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">House Majority Whip James Clyburn,D-SC</span>, August 31, 2007, responding to a question about what a positive report about progress being made in Iraq would mean for the Democrats in Congress.

"Well, one thing we know is what we're doing now isn't working. You know, this is our worst year for Americans killed in Iraq. So the surge was an absolute failure,"
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Ron Paul</span>, November 7, 2007.

"We're not going to baby sit a civil war."
~<span style="color: #FF0000"> Barack Obama</span>, January 2007 on the "Today" show.

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, January 10, 2007, on MSNBC.

"I did not see anything in the speech or anything in the run- up to the speech that provides evidence that an additional 15,000 to 20,000 more U.S. troops is going to make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that's taking place there."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, January 10, 2007 on CNN.

"We can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops. I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, January 14, 2007 on "Face The Nation".

"My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, July 18, 2007, on the Today show, anticipating Gen. Petraeus' report to Congress in September '07.

"Here's what we know. The surge has not worked."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, July 20, 2007 in New Hampshire:

"After putting an additional 30,000 troops in, far longer & more troops than the president had initially said, we have gone from a horrendous situation of violence in Iraq to the same intolerable levels of violence that we had back in June of 2006. So, essentially, after all this we're back where we were 15 months ago... So, I think it is fair to say that the president has simply tried to gain another six months to continue on the same course that he's been on for several years now. It is a course that will not succeed."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, September 13, 2007 at the Democratic Debate.

"...not only have we not seen improvements, but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, November 11, 2007 on "Meet The Press".

"Tonight Pres. Bush said that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that's just not true.
~ <span style="color: #FF0000">Barack Obama</span>, January 29, 2008.



And finally....

"In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda "? greatly weakening its effectiveness."
~<span style="color: #FF0000"> Barack Obama</span>, July 14, 2008 in a NYTimes Op-Ed.


Gee, what a difference a year makes.

[Diets17]

I hope it's true...and I hope it means eventually we can start to pull troops out and bring everyone back home safely. If we can seriously do that within the next 2 years, it'd be great for a number of different reasons.

[imported_ndn10]

comment raider 13?

[Diets17]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ndn12</div><div class="ubbcode-body">comment raider 13? </div></div>

Oh god why did you do this? haha

[imported_ndn10]

well he will say because im obsessed with him but in all honesty i needed a good laugh haha

[sup-rbeast]

The way I see it, all of y'all that want McCain are the same bunch that wanted Bush...so if that's the case, go vote McCain as long as you quit your daily bitchin about the state of the country. I for one don't live in Iraq, and give a rats a$$ about anything in that country but our soldiers who shouldn't have been sent there to begin with. And for everyone that wants to say the surge worked, my question is this: Why didn't our fearless commander in chief send enough soldiers into Iraq to begin with so the war could have been over by 2005 and in that case we'd never needed the surge to begin with. Or maybe we could have had the wisdom to know that Saddam was our counter balance to Iran and left the place the way it was....all the while taking care of business in Afghanistan, which is where our conflict is still waiting to be resolved.

[Diets17]

Im voting for the best candidate period. I'm undecided at this point, and I like them both for various reasons.

[NotSoSilentBob]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ndn12</div><div class="ubbcode-body">comment raider 13? </div></div>

He's scouring Democratic Underground for the talking point rebuttal to C&P.

[duckmeat]

For some reason, I'm skeptical...................

[sup-rbeast]

Bu$hleaguer...lol Ya know the funny thing about Bush is that he loves war so much but when he had the chance to actually fight he was sittin at a remote airfield in Alabama prolly snortin coke off his C.O.'s cock...All the while McCain was bein tortured in Hanoi which apparently left his mind in a serious [email protected] yeah, that's the kind of folks we need runnin the country. Anyone who voted for Bush shouldn't have a gripe when they go to fill up on gas...cuz without the War in Iraq, prices wouldn't be what they are... It goes kinda like this: a bunch of dumba$$es voted for a dunba$$ AFTER he'd already shown his dumba$$ery for 4 years...and now those same dumba$$es Biotch and whine when they can't hardly afford to live cuz of the dumba$$ they elected. Sounds like a dumba$$ proposition to me....oh, I nearly forgot, the other candidates were gonna take our guns and let gays marry...lol...just like they are doin right now (minus taking our guns away...cuz the Supreme Court apparently had to read the Constitution cuz, it seems, the majority of the american people were too dumba$$ed to read it for themselves..guaranteeing our right to guns)...Ok I'm through for now.