The General Petraeus Report (stream link & discussion)

[Patroklos]

Just so we are clear you’re full of ****

I decided to put words in your mouth as well, though mine are based on things you actually said

Are you not clever enough to find an actual appropriate quote?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Just so we are clear you’re full of ****

I decided to put words in your mouth as well, though mine are based on things you actually said

Are you not clever enough to find an actual appropriate quote?

You're 10x more full of **** than I am. Appropriate quotes don't make you less full of ****.

[Patroklos]

You're 10x more full of **** than I am.

Whatever, poo head Apparently we have two 5th graders posting in here

Appropriate quotes don't make you less full of ****.

It does make me academically honest. And not a hack, hack.

[Arrian]

The liberal after-action report, from Slate:

war stories
The House Tosses Softballs to Gen. Petraeus
Six hours of largely predictable, pro forma testimony.
By Fred Kaplan

Maybe Tuesday will be Congress' good news day.

Monday was mainly a disgrace. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their eagerly awaited appearances before a joint hearing of the House armed services and House foreign affairs committees to report on the status of war and politics in Iraq. The former's chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., heralded it as "maybe the most important hearing of the year."

Instead, Petraeus' testimony was predictable, Crocker's was almost pathetically strained, and the legislators' questions were by and large weak-kneed, even by House standards.

Tomorrow's hearings, before the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees (separately, not jointly), will probably prove more interesting, if just because several presidential candidates sit on the panels.

The House hearing started out promisingly. Skelton said the two witnesses "must answer the question: Why should we continue sending our young men and women to fight and die if the Iraqis don't make the tough decisions?" But then he never asked them that question.

It was a pro forma session. All involved had their say. There was nearly no intellectual tussling or back-and-forth, very little real discussion of policy, strategy, or tactics. (Only a few of the junior members, whose turn came toward the end of the hearing, even broached such matters as whether there even is, or soon will be, an Iraqi nation, thus raising the question of just what is the war's political goal.)

Gen. Petraeus elaborated on his earlier claims of "tactical momentum" and said these improvements were sufficient to allow a reduction of U.S. troops to "pre-surge levels"—back down from 20 to 15 combat brigades—by next summer. But he did not point out—nor did any of his interrogators—that such a drawdown is inevitable, simply because, as the next five brigades pull out of Iraq, the Army and Marines simply don't have any replacements ready to go. This would be the case no matter how well or badly things have gone.

Ambassador Crocker, a seasoned and expert diplomat, showed a stiff upper lip, trying to put forth an impression of progress without lying about anything.

"It is possible for the United States to secure its goals in Iraq," he testified (making no effort to disguise the italics). "I do believe that Iraqi leaders have the will" to reconcile sectarian conflicts in a unified government, he said, "though it will take longer" than he'd like to see. "Most Iraqis genuinely accept Iraq as a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian society," he asserted, then added, "It is the balance of power that has yet to be worked out." Oh, is that all?

The point of the surge, as Gen. Petraeus has often said, is to improve security in Baghdad in order to give Iraq's political leaders the "breathing room" to reconcile, pass key legislation, and create a unified government. So far, they've done nothing tangible toward that end. "Why," Skelton asked, "should we expect the next six months to be any different?"

Crocker answered, with salutary frankness, "I am frustrated every day I spend in Iraq. … Iraqis themselves are frustrated. … They are capable of coming together and thrashing out serious issues." But in the next six months? "I frankly do not expect that we will see rapid progress."

How long will it take? Neither Petraeus nor Crocker could say. Petraeus put up a chart showing the coming drawdown of U.S. forces—and a relaxation of the military mission, from main actor in counterinsurgency to mere supporter of improved Iraqi security forces. The graph showed specific dates up to next summer, when five brigades will be withdrawn—but beyond that, there were only question marks.

It would, he said, be premature to recommend "the pace of redeployment" beyond next summer. It is not time, he added, to scale back the scope of U.S. strategy. He noted that some have recommended dropping the counterinsurgency mission—protecting the Iraqi population from sectarian violence—and focusing just on going after terrorists and training Iraqi forces. But Petraeus said we need to keep pursuing all three goals.

As Crocker put it, "Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse."

I wasn't at the hearing. Like most people, I watched it on television. But a pall of paralysis and gloom seemed to drape the room. Nobody could have been surprised by the questions or answers. Nobody could have been satisfied by what anyone said. The situation is indisputably grim. Nobody seems to know what to do about it.

At the start of the hearing, Skelton referred to Petraeus as "the right person—three years too late and 250,000 troops too short." Later on, Petraeus was asked if he had enough troops to do his job. He replied, "I have what we have—what the military could have." Which didn't answer the question. Nobody pressed the issue. What was the point? The horrendous mistakes of the past are too obvious. Petraeus and Crocker had nothing to do with those mistakes. Nor will they have anything to do with the decisions that get us out of, or suck us deeper into, this war. That's beyond their pay grade. They're doing their jobs; they're doing them as well as can be expected. The crucial questions need to be addressed elsewhere—and won't be dealt with until after the 2008 election.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2173654/

[Patroklos]

The left is pathetic. Half are calling Petraeus a traitor (I bet they loved that bombshell when he told them Bush/The White House hadn't even seen his testimony ) before he even spoke a word, half are ignoring the two most qualified assessors because what they had to say was inconvenient.

The left

Gen. Petraeus elaborated on his earlier claims of "tactical momentum" and said these improvements were sufficient to allow a reduction of U.S. troops to "pre-surge levels"—back down from 20 to 15 combat brigades—by next summer. But he did not point out—nor did any of his interrogators—that such a drawdown is inevitable, simply because, as the next five brigades pull out of Iraq, the Army and Marines simply don't have any replacements ready to go. This would be the case no matter how well or badly things have gone.

I like how they say that, but then fail to make the differentiation between being compelled to lower levels regardless with the situation more stable (perhaps self sustaining) and being compelled to lower levels regardless with the situation guaranteed to disintegrate. There is a big difference, and Petraeus was clear one which one he considers to be the case.

Though he did say he would reevaluate in March, and that is being heckled by the left why? Imagine that, do what the facts on the ground warrant, unheard of!

[East Street Trader]

"The point of the surge, as Gen. Petraeus has often said, is to improve security in Baghdad in order to give Iraq's political leaders the "breathing room" to reconcile, pass key legislation, and create a unified government. "


The notion that a nation state is forged by passing key legislation is on a par with the notion that democracy is created by holding an election.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Patroklos
The left

Indeed. Teh left

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/09/10/video-code-pink-removed-from-petraeus-hearing/

[germanos]

This Crocker guy is pretty week. Who has him by the balls?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Patroklos
The left is pathetic.

As is "the right."

Meanwhile, reasonable, intelligent people can talk about this stuff without all the bull****, can't they? Or maybe that's too much to ask.

The notion that a nation state is forged by passing key legislation is on a par with the notion that democracy is created by holding an election.

I think it's more the notion that creating a functional government is step 1. While significant groups are boycotting the government, there really isn't much hope, is there?

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Wow, DD, that site is some righty circle jerk. Hell, it's exhibit A for my response to Patty (so is "the right").

-Arrian

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Arrian
Wow, DD, that site is some righty circle jerk. Hell, it's exhibit A for my response to Patty (so is "the right").

Screw the site. I posted it for teh clips.

[Patroklos]

I think it's more the notion that creating a functional government is step 1. While significant groups are boycotting the government, there really isn't much hope, is there?

As I said in the last surge thread, and Crocker said yesterday, what is more important is what is actually happening in the lower levels of government. Photo ops and meaningless paper signing by out of touch media whores is irrelevant on all accounts (as it is in our own government).

As Crocker said, revenue sharing is happening anyways, provincial development is happening anyways, amnesty is happening anyways, and it is all happinging without the legeslation. From the ground up, or the top down, I'll take either but I actually prefer the bottom up, there are alot more people on the bottom.

[Arrian]

Right, fine, the legislation isn't the key. The key is getting all the various groups that matter to the table to haggle instead of shoot each other. That was why the word "reconcile" was in the sentence that EST quoted. My response was directed at him.

-Arrian

[Patroklos]

Right, fine, the legislation isn't the key.

Which is an important point. We don't really need the piece of paper but rather the actual effect. If the effect is happening without the paper sure not what we expected but I'll take it.

The problem is everyone with the "get out now" agenda is stuck on these arbitrary benchmarks. Nothing matters but those irrelevant vocabulary choices.

In any case, Petreaus and Crocker said there piece, we will see who pays attention.

[Ramo]

From McClatchy, who have hands down been doing the best reporting on Iraq as far as the American press goes:

Security in Iraq still elusive
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Sunday, September 9, 2007


BAGHDAD — When President Bush announced in January what the White House called a “New Way Forward” in Iraq, he said that Iraqi and American troops would improve security while the Iraqi government improved services. Responsibility for security in most of Iraq would be turned over to Iraqi security forces by November.

With better security would come the breathing room needed for political reconciliation, Bush said.

With less than a week to go before the White House delivers a congressionally mandated report on that plan, none of this has happened.

Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, are scheduled to appear on Monday before two House of Representatives committees to discuss security and politics in Iraq. The White House assessment, which must be delivered by Sept. 15, is expected to hail security gains and hold out hope for improvement — if U.S. troops are given more time.

But interviews with Iraqis, statistics on violence gathered independently by McClatchy Newspapers and a review of developments in the country since the U.S. began increasing troop strength here last February provide little reason for optimism.

Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs. Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest, by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors. Services haven't improved across most of the capital — the international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003 — and tens of thousands of Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month in search of safety.

Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and political leaders continue to intervene in their activities.

Civilian deaths haven't decreased in any significant way across the country, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim.

The only sign of progress is in the homogenous Sunni Arab province of Anbar, where tribes have turned on al Qaida in Iraq and established relative security in a once violent area. But that success has little to do with the 4,000 U.S. troops who were sent to Anbar as part of the surge of 30,000 additional troops to Iraq. Instead, it began more than four months earlier, with the formation last September of the Anbar Salvation Council to fight the escalating terror of Sunni extremists. Officials agree that the anti-Islamist coalition in Anbar has yet to ally itself with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and a recent National Intelligence Estimate warned that it might even threaten it.

Elsewhere in Iraq, violence continues to flourish. In the north since the surge began, suspected Sunni extremists have carried out some of the deadliest terror attacks of the war, killing hundreds in car and truck bombings.

In the southern city of Basra, death tolls have increased as rival Shiite militias square off for control.

American politicians have focused on the Iraqi government’s inability to meet a series of benchmarks designed to mark steps toward reconciliation. A Government Accountability Office report last week said that the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of the 18 benchmarks and had partially met only four others.

A preliminary White House report in July gave better marks but still pronounced little hope that compromise was near on key issues such as the division of oil revenues, the role in government of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party and the setting of a schedule for provincial elections. The National Intelligence Estimate by the country’s 16 intelligence agencies concurred last month.

Bush administration officials are expected to praise recent agreements by some Iraqi leaders and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to work toward compromise. But Maliki’s cabinet still has nearly as many vacancies as it has sitting ministers, and no major legislation governing Iraq’s major issues, including a militia disarmament program, has made it to the floor of the Iraqi parliament.

Last week, the parliament, back from its summer vacation, barely had a quorum in its first meetings.

BAGHDAD

Taking control of Iraq’s capital city was at the center of Bush’s surge strategy in January. At least half the U.S. troop surge is taking place here and surrounding suburbs, where the U.S. focused on establishing so-called joint security outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods to be closer to areas where sectarian violence was claiming dozens of lives each day.

The military threw up concrete walls across the capital to foil car bombs and stop Shiite militia members or Sunni insurgents from entering targeted neighborhoods. One military official said U.S. troops were erecting walls as “fast as they could build them.” Most “hardened” neighborhoods, encircled with towering gray walls and with single entrances and exits, are Sunni enclaves, military officials said.

The result is a city now sharply divided into sectarian boroughs where the battle lines have only hardened. Some Baghdad residents say they feel somewhat safer in their neighborhoods, but they fear traveling anywhere else in the capital.

Falah Amin, 52, a Sunni from Adhamiyah, called her neighborhood in northeast Baghdad a prison. Adhamiyah was among the first neighborhoods to be walled off by the U.S. military to protect it from Sunni car bombs and Shiite militias.

“We’ve been separated from the rest of our city as if we have the plague,” Amin said.

The neighborhood, Amin said, is virtually empty. Those left don’t have the money or connections to leave, she said.

“Is this to keep us safe or to keep all those outside the wall from seeing what is taking place inside the walled area?” she asked.

Amin expects the worst if U.S. troops pull out and leave Adhamiyah to the Iraqi security forces and a government she doesn't trust.

“First, they will empty Baghdad of the Sunnis, then they will think about security, real security, not now.”

Even Shiite residents are concerned. “If the U.S. troops leave, (the Shiite militias) will be free and we will have a Shiite Taliban,” said Mohammed al Kabi, 39, a Shiite and once hard-line follower of Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. “I don’t believe that the Iraqi government can control the security situation because some of the high-ranking officials cooperate with the militias.”

Outside the walled-in neighborhoods, the push to drive Sunnis from Shiite neighborhoods continues in a city that U.S. military officers say has gone from being 65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite.

Late last year, Sadr's Mahdi Army militia had moved from Baghdad’s mostly Shiite eastern half across the Tigris River to the Sunni-dominated western half, pushing Sunnis out of the city’s northwest. That campaign has continued during the surge, with the Mahdi Army fighting to control the Jihad, Bayaa, Amil and Saidiyah neighborhoods in the city’s southwest.

The push is particularly evident in Saidiyah, where Sunnis and Shiites are displaced daily. Military experts say that if the Shiite militias take control of the area, the Shiites will have limited Sunnis in the capital to just a few enclaves.

Unidentified bodies continue to show up daily in Baghdad, though the pace is lower than it was last December, when 1,030 bodies were found, according to statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers. The biggest drop came between December and January, before the U.S. began adding troops and after Sadr told his troops to lie low. Since February, when the first additional troops arrived, the trend has been inconsistent — dropping to 596 in February, rising in May to 736, and then dropping again to 428 in August.

Some military officials and many residents attribute the generally lower numbers not to the U.S. security plan, but to the purges in mixed neighborhoods that have left militants with fewer people to kill.

There’s little evidence that Baghdad residents are feeling safer and returning to homes they’d fled, said Dana Graber Ladek of the International Organization for Migration, which tracks refugee movements. Of an estimated 1 million Iraqis who’ve fled their homes since February 2006, 83 percent are from Baghdad, the IOM says.

“There have been very few returns,” Ladek said. Those that have come back have done so only briefly to gather belongings. “They are waiting for long-term stability.”

ANBAR

No one disputes that Anbar province, once the heart of the Sunni insurgency, is far more secure now than it was this time last year. But what credit American troops can claim for that and how likely it is to remain that way are hotly debated.

The tribal rebellion against al Qaida in Iraq began in September 2006, well before the surge was even contemplated. That’s when tribal leaders, fed up with al Qaida in Iraq’s attacks on moderate Sunnis and its efforts to impose strict Islamic fundamentalism, formed the Anbar Salvation Council to battle the group.

Tribal sheik Fassal Gaoud, a former Anbar governor, told McClatchy Newspapers in June that the tribes previously had asked for U.S. help in attacking the group, but had been rebuffed. By the time U.S. troops began working with the tribes, the battle against al Qaida was well under way. Gaoud, however, was killed in a bombing at the Mansour Melia hotel in central Baghdad in July in the midst of the U.S. surge.

“We did in three months what they couldn't do in four years," Ali Hatam Ali al Suleiman, another tribal leader, told McClatchy in June.

Still, Anbar is the scene of extraordinary security measures.

Ramadi, the province’s capital, has been subdivided by towering concrete walls that divide neighborhoods from one another and stop trucks and cars from traveling in most of the capital.

In Fallujah, Anbar’s largest city, only cargo trucks were allowed to drive through the city for three months. Now police are allowing only 200 civilian vehicles, primarily taxis, to circulate in the city. Fallujah’s 350,000 residents must all carry special government-issued identification cards.

Residents complain that the city has become a police state and that police frequently torture and kill residents with any suspected ties to al Qaida in Iraq. Residents who complain about the police also are abused, they say.

Violent deaths, however, have dropped, from 36 in January, one month before the surge, to 11 in August. About 63 people were killed in June during a bloody fight to control the city, according to local hospitals.

There are few indications that the campaign against al Qaida has brought the Sunni tribes closer to the Shiite-led Maliki government. Last month, Maliki told McClatchy Newspapers that he won’t work with certain Sunni groups that the Americans are working with, and other Shiite politicians have worried that the tribes will oppose the government, a concern echoed by last month’s National Intelligence Estimate.

ELSEWHERE IN IRAQ

In other areas in Iraq, violence has increased and conditions are deteriorating — Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion. No Iraqi McClatchy spoke to in preparation for this article said he or she had confidence in the government.

Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaida in Iraq front organization, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al Jarba.

"It's very bad," Jarba said. "There are so many attacks that never make it in the media."

In August, the largest attack in the history of the Iraq war killed at least 322 people in two impoverished villages in Nineveh province, one of a series of deadly bombings, each of which briefly held the title as the deadliest so far of the year.

A blast in March killed 152 people in Nineveh’s Tal Afar, and 150 people were killed in an explosion in Amerli in Salah ad Din province in July. A double suicide bombing in July left at least 85 people dead in the northern city of Kirkuk.

In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control.

At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala.

In Basra, the strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there.

Overall, civilian casualties in Iraq appear to have remained steady throughout the siege, though numbers are difficult to come by.

According to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, 984 people were killed across Iraq in February, and 1,011 died in violence in August. No July numbers were released because the ministry said the numbers weren't clear.

But an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to release numbers said those numbers were heavily manipulated.

The official said 1,980 Iraqis had been killed in July and that violent deaths soared in August, to 2,890.

(Special correspondents Laith Hammoudi, Mohammed al Dulaimy and Sahar Issa contributed from Baghdad. Jamal Naji contributed from Fallujah and Ali Omar al Basri contributed from Basra.)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/19566.html

Let's recap. Sectarian violence is roughly at the same level as it was when the surge started. Violence in Baghdad is down somewhat (still not down to the pre-al Askariya Mosque bombing levels), but that's largely a function of the successful ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs within the city (going from 65% Sunni to 75% Shia). The "progress on the ground" that war supporters herald comes directly at the cost of sectarian reconciliation with us arming thugs (terrorist thugs, even) like the 1920 Revolution Brigade who are totally at odds with the central government, and are able to torture and kill anyone they accuse of being part of AQI. In the South around Basra, you've got a mafia-style rule split between the Mahdi Army, the Badr Brigade, and Fadhila. The security forces are dominated by sectarian militias. And there's still absolutely no progress as far as political reforms that could set the stage for national reconciliation; and with Sunni parties (including the National Accord Front) taking absolutely no part in the Maliki gov't, there's little hope of it happening.