Who's kidding whom?

posted by Bill Arnett @ 9:17 AM Permalink

From today's WaPo titled, "Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled.":

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks."[…]

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures.

So, now the maladministration would like us to believe that the "greatest existential threat" America has ever faced, after bogging down our military for five years has suddenly, just since the "surge", been defeated.

The very fact that they would try to portray our armed forces as having been successful when so many problems clearly remain is just more propaganda for the consumption of the bottom 29% of the Republican Party that still marches in lockstep with bush/cheney.

It is also diametrically opposed to recent reports that the number of terrorists and terrorist attacks have gone up every year since bush began this misbegotten war.

The fact that General Petreaus changed the method of counting terrorist and sectarian killings to exclude many of the most common forms of attacks and causes of death alone gives the lie to these new claims.

The only factors that may be making a difference are these: American forces have conducted a systematic genocide of the Iraqi people and killed over one million of them. Couple that with the displacement of more than two million people fleeing Iraq and another two million or so displaced internally, and now a cholera outbreak that may kill thousands more, might indeed make it seem we have been making progress, but at the cost of our national identity and honor.

But we have reduced the population by over three million, with two million more forced to flee their ancestral homes, a reduction from 28 million Iraqis to fewer than 23 million. Five million dead or displaced.

But, if we wish to accept the "reality" created by the maladministration and declare victory, then we should bring all our troops home, for if al-Qaeda is finished in Iraq we are now only fighting the very people we allegedly went to war to free from the clutches of madman Saddam and his non-existant WMDs.

Seems like a perfect time to bring all our troops home (except that we all remember "Mission Accomplished" when no such thing had been accomplished at all).

Labels: Bush, disinformation, genocide, hypocrisy, Iraq war, liars, neocons, propaganda