Sunday, September 30, 2007

Petraeus Report Confirmed, Surge Working, Media Not


Engram at BACKTALK has another great post.
He lays out clearly what the anti-war, antiAmerican, Leftwing News Media SHOULD be reporting today and tomorrow, but aren't because it doesn't fit their Bush hating anti American template.
"I had expected the news today to report the astonishingly low number of civilian and military casualties for the month of September. After all, there is an on-going debate about whether or not General Petraeus was betraying his nation by deliberately lying about the improving casualty situation in Iraq. Casualties from the month of September are directly relevant to that debate. In fact, they would appear to settle the issue. Things might get worse down the line, and al Qaeda will certainly manage to sneak in more mass-casualty attacks before this all over, but as of right now the trend in violence is very definitely in the downward direction (just as General Petraeus said was the case)."


But what do people read when they pick up the paper today? This:
Petreaus Admits to Rise in Violence
"Militants with the extremist group Al Qaeda in Iraq have launched a string of deadly bombings in recent weeks, including one this week that killed at least 24 people at a reconciliation meeting between Sunni and Shiite tribal, religious, political and security leaders in the Diyala provincial capital, Baqubah.

At least 11 Iraqis were killed in bomb blasts, mortar and gunfire today. The U.S. military also announced the deaths of two soldiers in small-arms fire, one during combat operations in a southern section of Baghdad and the other in Diyala."
What the media ISN'T telling us is that..."
"...the ICCC already includes those 24 deaths in the 75 deaths for the month that are attributable to al Qaeda's suicide bombers."
OR that...
"As of 8:00 P.M. September 30 (Baghdad time), documented deaths from suicide bombers in the month of September come to a mere 75.
Last month, it was over 600..."

And it's NOT just in Anbar either...


Despite Iraqi casualties being astonishingly LOW and despite the troop surge, US military casualties are way down (see graph below) and considering that this has happened despite the fact that Ramadan began on September 13, and despite the fact that al Qaeda threatened a major offensive during that time, the media hangs on to defeat and refuses to report the successes that are impossible to overlook "accidentally".


Engram concludes that the LA Times and media reporting is "pathetic"...
"That's just pathetic. Would anyone reading this (LA Times) story know that casualties are way down in Iraq? Or would they instead assume that violence continues apace and that our lying general was forced to admit it?
Well, as someone once said, "you go to war with the media you have, not the media you wish you had."
In his previous post at BACKTALK Engram details database numbers to demonstrate the effort to kill, disrupt and defeat America while starting a civil war by Al Qaeda and their failure to do so and concludes that hopefully...
"This may be al Qaeda's last gasp in Iraq. They have bet everything on defeating the troop surge, but it seems that the Democrats in Washington will not come to their rescue in time. Then again, I have mistakenly thought that al Qaeda was suppressed in the past, only to have my hopes dashed by yet another in a long string of spectacular mass-casualty attacks. Time will tell, but the trends seem favorable (finally)."
How long can the left hang on to the hope and dreams of defeat?
We are about to see, but one thing is for sure, it will be pathetic.
-red

UPDATE: 10/01/2007- Al Qaeda in "last throws"? Engram demonstrates today, again using liberal bodycount groups own numbers that not only did the surge "work" but how Shiites are taking on Al Qaeda suicide bombers and demonstrates irrefutably how the US military is absolutely WINNING the war against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11/2001 and are now focused on Iraq.
Al Qaeda has failed to incite civil war, failed to defeat the surge and thus failed to turn enough Americans off to Bush and the war to win. They will no doubt try and form a "re-surge" to try and offset this HUGE VICTORY for America and Iraqis, but make no mistake, the left has been DEAD WRONG about the war and whether winning is achievable. A US/Iraqi victory is not only achievable, it is being achieved as we speak and is now moving into the "most likely to succeed" category.
-read all about it at BACKTALK if you dare know the truth!

Just heard a blip on KTOK as Engram reports that the Media is slowing, begrudgingly, minimally beginning to REPORT THE TRUTH in small bits, confirming the Petraeus Report. But don't look for them to apologize... much less understand the war, ... BABY STEPS before running with the libs.
-red s tater


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2 Comments:

Blogger RD said...

Rodger A Payne (showed the movie Red Dawn in class to make students sympathize with the "insurgents" i.e. AL Qaeda in Iraq)

Made comments that the war is un-winnable and discounted the Petraeus report with "consider the source".
Answered my challenge to refute Engrams analysis of the surge and Iraq... and here is his entire rambling post with several inaccurate statements from his blog.
he debate about the surge

Red S Tater is back (see comments here) and has issued a "challenge" for me to revise my comments about the report General Petraeus delivered to Congress a couple of weeks ago.

Red is touting a blog post by "Professor Engram," which purports to show that civilian violence in Iraq is down since the surge began. In other words, Petraeus is right and the surge is working.

Specifically, Red claims that Engram

"refuted the moveon.org claim and analysis completely. You DO agree with the moveon.org ad in terms of it's claim that the "books were cooked"..?" I could be wrong but it seems like that was your basic take over at Minerva a while back.

At first I was going to ignore Red since I've said nothing about MoveOn and I did not specifically argue that the books were cooked. Mostly mindless "discussions" involving people calling each other names are not of much interest to me.

Nonetheless, I looked at Red's link and readily noticed that Professor Engram doesn't address, let alone refute, most of my specific comments.

Yes, Engram compares the summer decline in violence 2007 to the same time period in 2006, but where is the data for 2005 or 2004 or 2003? Using only the data Engram highlights, it is clear that the August 2007 violence is now down to roughly the level of January through April 2006. This very strongly suggests that civilian violence in Iraq remains very high and that the surge will have no meaningful long-term effect. After all, the surge is about to end for lack of troops and the goal was not merely to return the violence to an already high level.

Moreover, I would add that nobody who looks at this kind of evidence focuses too much attention on a single data outlier. What if August 2007 proves to be a genuine anomaly? There are going to be peaks and valleys in the casualty data over a period of years. Generally, Iraq continues to be an unsafe place to live (only Sudan ranks below Iraq on the failed state index).

Engram says nothing about refugees. Iraq's population is about 27.5 million; yet, over 100,000 people are apparently fleeing Iraq per month. Over a one year period, that's over 4% of the population. We would expect nearly 100 fewer monthly dead civilians in Iraq just from a reduced population base.

Past ethnic cleansing has also likely contributed to the decline in violence. The potential victims have segregated themselves.

And, of course, none of the body count data addresses the social issue I highlighted in my critique. Most Iraqis think it is OK to kill American troops -- and the number saying that has increased significantly since the surge started. Counterinsurgency cannot succeed in that context.

One has to look at the big picture, Red. There's no evidence that the surge is winning the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis. There's been almost no genuine political progress in Iraq and even the American generals say that the insurgency won't be defeated militarily. The civil war has to end politically."
END POST/

I will respond below.
-red

8:07 PM  
Blogger RD said...

Here is what Dr Payne just did...
Deny saying you don't believe Petraeus, ...call September August and say it was an anomaly (more denial without facts), it was nothing, it won't last(more denial without facts), change the subject to refugees, talk about hearts and minds (more denial without looking at the facts) and discount the entire idea (big picture) without ever actually looking at the data or analyisis...and finally give it the old insignificant brushoff (more denial).

classic liberal "i got nothing" debate tactics.
lol
You can lead a horse to water but an Ass is still an Ass!

8:16 PM  

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