Measuring Success of the Surge

Bernard Finel quips that, "The 'success' of the surge is like winning a pie eating contest where is the prize is… more pie." That's a good line, regardless of where you stand on Iraq. More seriously, he tries to come up with metrics for defining "success" and observes, We are now precisely back where we started, though at 2005 levels ...

Petraeus Senate Testimony Cites ‘Significant but Uneven’ Progress

General David Petraeus' testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today was cautious and somewhat predictable. Key quotes follow with bold emphasis mine in all cases: Since Ambassador Crocker and I appeared before you seven months ago there has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq. Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths have been reduced substantially, Al ...

Petraeus Defiant in Senate Testimony

Blackfive's Uncle Jimbo has what purports to be an advanced text of the "opening statement Gen. Petraeus will make tomorrow to Congress." [UPDATE: It turns out that I've been had and this is just a wishful thinking piece on the part of Jimbo.] As to the progress report itself, he is naturally touting the success of the strategy that ...

Basra Mess Proves Surge Success!

The Mahdi Army controls Basra and four days of intense fighting there has been punctuated with the bombing of one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines.* U.S. officials are painting this is a success story. Karim Kadim/Associated Press via NYT The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite ...

Building Democracy, One Warlord at a Time

The Washington Post has a heartbreaking article which might as well be titled "The More Things Change..." regarding our current "progress" in Fallujah:[Col. Faisal Ismail al-]Zobaie, 51, knows the nature of the men in black masks. He is a former insurgent. Now, as the police chief, he has turned against the insurgency, especially al-Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. military showcases ...

Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making ‘Sufficient Progress’

General David Petraeus has stated the obvious: Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday. Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" ...

Gates Pauses Surge Drawdown

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the post-Surge drawdown may have to wait. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday endorsed, for the first time, the idea of pausing the drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq this summer. "A brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense," Gates told reporters after meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. ...

75% of Baghdad Secure, Up from 8%

The good guys "own the streets" in Baghdad. About 75% of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now secure, a dramatic increase from 8% a year ago when President Bush ordered more troops to the capital, U.S. military figures show. The military classifies 356 of Baghdad's 474 neighborhoods in the "control" or "retain" category of its four-tier security rating system, meaning enemy ...

Iraq Defense Minister: At Least 10 More Years of Occupation

Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qadir has announced that the Iraqi government is far, far away from being able to handle its own security.The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at ...

You Call This a Victory?

Matthew Yglesias takes a break from the Iowa caucus madness to point out, quite rightly, that the Surge has been an unambiguous failure.The theory behind the surge was clear. Some people said more troops would bring more security to Iraq. Critics of that idea noted that sending more troops would be logistically unsustainable. Surge theorists posited that a temporary increase ...

Murtha: Surge is Working

While many war supporters have been pointing to security improvements in Iraq as evidence that the Surge is working for weeks, the meme got a significant boost yesterday from an unlikely source: Congressman Jack Murtha. U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that ...

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Glenn Reynolds links to several commentators who are outraged that the media isn't making a big deal of the fact that the past two months have seen a drop in U.S. casualties in Iraq. Among those linked is Dean Barnett, who complains: YOU'D THINK THIS would be a big story. After all, the mainstream media makes such a show of ...

Washington Post: the Surge is Working

In an editorial this morning the Washington Post asserts that by any objective standard “the Surge” is working: A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry ...

Anbar Progress Spreads to Diyala

The bottom-up approach to political consensus building the worked in Anbar province is now showing signs of success in Diyala. Most of the major tribes in a strategic province northeast of Baghdad have signed agreements to support U.S. and Iraqi forces, a sign the alliance-building initiative that started in Anbar province is spreading. In Diyala province, tribal leaders representing 20 ...

Public Opinion Unchanged by Petraeus Testimony

The American public's views on Iraq policy are within the margin of error of where they were before the highly publicized testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker before Congress, two recent surveys show. A Gallup/USA Today poll compares views right after the testimony to right before: In the days before Petraeus' appearances and President Bush's speech to the nation ...