Lies, Damn Lies and Working the Surge

The narrative seems to be fairly obvious already - Bush and his supporters seem fully poised to trot out Gen Patreaus on Sept the 11th and bold facedly claim that "The Surge Is Working" just as was claimed Sgt Aguina at Yearlykos.

But then again, it just might be that what BushCo is selling is probably going to be rejected on delivery. Listen as Wolf Blitzer shoots Rep. Boustany (R-LA) down in flames for echoing the false Patreaus claims that "Sectarian Deaths in Iraq are Down".

Rather than let Boustany blather away - Blitzer corrected him using a recent LA Times Report.

Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday. In July, the civilian death toll was 1,753, and in June it was 1,227.

In terms of Iraqi dead people, those numbers are high and getting worse despite the increased military troop levels of the United States — the so-called surge — having been in effect over the past couple of months.

Oops.

But then let's pay close attention to the semantic trick being played here - Rep. Boustany didn't say that civilian deaths were down he said that sectarian violence was down - and one wonders, how does he know whether this truck bomb or that truck bomb was sectarian or not? If these were "insurgents" why didn't they attack U.S. or coalition troops?

After denying for so long that Iraq is in the midst of an open Civil War, Bushies now wish to claim that the non-war is now "over" although the bodies continue to pile higher and higher. Is this supposedly all the work of Al Qaeda? All 2000 of them?

Similarly Gen Patreaus seems to be making the same distinction between run-of-the-mill death and sectarian death:

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year.

But these claims doesn't seem to jibe with like - the facts (via McClatchy).

Violence remains endemic, with truck bombs in two northern Iraqi villages claiming the largest single death toll of the war — more than 300 confirmed dead and counting. North of Baghdad, another truck bomb destroyed a key bridge on the road linking the capital to Mosul, the first successful bridge attack since June.

And while top U.S. officials insist that 50 percent of the capital is now under effective U.S. or government control, compared with 8 percent in February, statistics indicate that the improvement in violence is at best mixed.

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim.

Or The AP

* Iraq is suffering about double the number of war-related deaths throughout the country compared with last year — an average daily toll of 33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year.

• Nearly 1,000 more people have been killed in violence across Iraq in the first eight months of this year than in all of 2006. So far this year, about 14,800 people have died in war-related attacks and sectarian murders. AP reporting accounted for 13,811 deaths in 2006. The United Nations and other sources placed the 2006 toll far higher.

• Baghdad has gone from representing 76 percent of all civilian and police war-related deaths in Iraq in January to 52 percent in July, bringing it back to the same spot it was roughly a year ago.

Nor are U.S. Troop Casualties down during the Surge.

June-July-August 2003: 113 American troops died

June-July-August 2004: 162 American troops died

June-July-August 2005: 217 American troops died

June-July-August 2006: 169 American troops died

June-July-August 2007: 260 American troops died

This magic smoke-screen of deaths that aren't real deaths is wearing so thin even Katie Dumb as Rocks Couric can see through it.

Well, I was surprised, you know, after I went to eastern Baghdad, I was taken to the Allawi market, which is near Haifa, which was the scene of that very bloody gun battle back in January. And, you know, this market seems to be thriving. And there were a lot of people out and about. A lot of family-owned businesses and vegetable stalls.

And so, you do see signs of life that seem to be normal. Of course, that’s what the U.S. military wants me to see, so you have to keep that in mind as well. But I think there are definitely areas where the situation is improving.

Just as Rep. Tauscher recently pointed out - this is all Death By Powerpoint.

I will tell you that when you get in the Green Zone, there is a physiological phenomenon I think called Green Zone fog," said Tauscher. "It’s death by powerpoint. ... It’s always that their argument is winning."

In all fairness it may be true that in some areas of Baghdad things have improved, just as they've improved in the al-Anbar province where rather than surge, we cut and ran leaving the job of maintaining the peace to the local Sunni Militia.

But then again just as one area gets better, others get a whole lot worse. On August 15th the Deadliest Attack of the Entire War Took Place in a quadruple bombing in Northern Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 15 — The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in an area of mud and stone houses in the remote northern desert on Tuesday evening reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded, several local officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Rescuers and recovery teams were still digging through as many as 200 flattened houses, and the death toll could still rise significantly, the officials said.

"It is impossible for us to give an exact figure for the dead and wounded," said Dr. Kifah Kattu, director general of the hospital in Sinjar, a few miles north of where the explosions occurred. As an example, he cited one village in the area of the explosions, called Al Aziz, where he said 40 of the village’s simple homes had been obliterated and no dead or wounded had yet been recovered.

Open Markets over here vs 200 flattened houses over there?

Sure that's "progress" if you happen to be running in circles.

It's clear that the Bushies have long felt the big problem with this War has simply been that not enough "good news" has been getting out, that they've simply had a massive PR problem and that just like a political campaign all they need to do is stay on message to finally break through. So naturally they've decided to simply invent some good news!

Bush's surprise visit to Anbar today underscores this beautifully.

"President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, using the war zone as a backdrop to argue his case that the buildup of U.S. troops is helping stabilizing the nation." On his way to the APEC summit in Australia, Bush made a detour to Iraq, landing at an air base in a remote part of Anbar province. Accompanied by security aides Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and Stephen Hadley, Bush’s visit came just hours after British forces completed their pullout from Basra. "Residents of Basra cheered the withdrawal."

We've heard the Bush Admin try to kneecap the leaked GAO report that points out that few of the security and political benchmarks which had been required for Iraq have been met.

Bushies have argued that these benchmarks were designed to "lock in on failure".

I know it's been four whole months since the Iraq Supplemental Bill was passed which made these Benchmarks a part of the LAW - but let's just jump in the way back machine (also known as the Google) and point out just who came up with these benchmarks in the first place? The Bush Administration did.

"The benchmarks - the Iraqis agreed to it, the president agreed it," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who heads a House subcommittee that controls defense spending. "We're saying to them, 'Well, let's put some teeth into the benchmarks.'"

Although those teeth were severely filed down by Bush's Veto - they remain. And now the Bushies want to claim that their own benchmarks are too negative, simply because - they've failed to meet nearly all of them?

It's like giving someone an open-book test and they come back at the end of the class and say their dog snuck into the room and ate all the answers right off the desk.

Just for the record these were the questions the Administration asked itself to answer via the Iraq Supplemental Bill which...

• Establishes 18 benchmarks on which to measure the Iraqi government’s performance;
• Restricts use of foreign aid to the Iraqi government should they fail to make meaningful progress;
• Requires the President to certify that the Iraqi government deserves these funds even if they fail to perform as promised;
• Requires the Administration to testify before Congress and an independent assessment by the General Accounting Office on the performance of the Iraqi government;
• Requires the President to submit a report on the combat proficiency of Iraqi security forces;
• Requires the President to redeploy our troops if the Iraqi government concludes our presence is no longer desired;
• Restricts use of Defense Department funding until Congress receives information about contractors in Iraq; and
• States official U.S. policy precludes no permanent military bases in Iraq, no torture of detainees, and no designs on Iraqi oil.

The Entire Point of The Surge was to establish a buffer which would allow the Iraqi Government to accomplish the above. That was the Test and both the Iraqi Government and the Bush Administration HAVE FAILED.

Now they want more time - a lot more time - according to a new book on BushCo.

In Robert Draper’s book on the Bush presidency, "Dead Certain," Bush says the goal of his Iraq strategy is to play it out until "October-November." That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, "stay longer."

So in order to accomplish his true goal of simply keeping us in Iraq for the foreseeable future - Bush and his cronies plan to outright lie to Congress.

It's not like they haven't done it before.

But this time the odds of their pulling yet another Jedi Mind Trick on Congress seem a little slim if even weak-willed corporate media lapdogs such as Blitzer and Couric can see through the fog of cute semantic tricks like referring only to supposed "sectarian violence" and focusing on pockets of relative calm while a hurricane of death surrounds you.

– Attacks in June "reached their highest daily average since May 2003, showing a surge in violence as President George W. Bush completed a buildup of U.S. troops."

– The "number of unidentified bodies in the capital has risen again to pre-surge levels over the last two months," concluded a report by IraqSlogger.

– Today’s National Intelligence Estimate concludes that "the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively."

This time we need to point out that implmenting the al-Anbar solution doesn't mean increasing the Surge, it means by-passing the local government, the Iraqi Army and the police and working directly with the people - and the Sunni & Shia Militias - to help fight al Qeada and bring peace. It means DIPLOMACY - not more soldiers.

There is of course the possibility that this just might destabilize the Shia dominated government that we helped install and have continued to prop up despite their complete and total dysfunction. Some prices are worth paying IMO.

Oh, and then there's the little detail that the surge can't be sustained past April no matter what. It's far better for our troops and for the Iraqis that we plan for that reality, than ignore it.

They fooled (some of us) once before, but now I think signs strongly indicate that Roger Daltry was right all those years ago, this time "We Won't Get Fooled Again!"

It's far past time we got our troops out of this meat-grinder and got the Iraqi people to take control of their own country - with or without the blessings of the Iraqi government.

Vyan