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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (55271)	3/16/2007 1:57:53 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 90947

Generals say ‘surge’ plan has saved lives Ned Parker in Baghdad Iraqi and US generals have hailed a fall in insurgent attacks as proof that the Baghdad “surge” plan is begining to show results one month into the operation. Yet despite an apparent fall in the number of kidnappings and murders, the scourge of car bombs and roadside bombs has not abated and most officers caution that the crucial bench-mark will be Baghdad’s death toll in the coming months. General Qasim al-Mussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi operation, said that the number of civilians killed in the past month had fallen to 265, compared with 1,440 from mid-January to mid-February. But there was no way to verify the figures independently. Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman for US forces in Iraq, said that “there has been an over 50 per cent reduction in murders and executions” since Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing the Law) began. But US and Iraqi forces still faced about 200 attacks each day... timesonline.co.uk Decline In Deaths And Attacks Shows Surge Success captainsquartersblog.com Hundreds Of Mahdis, Thousands Of Insurgents Detained The new counterinsurgency strategies of David Petraeus have shown remarkable initial success. USA Today reports that the US and Iraqi forces now employing the Baghdad security plan have captured thousands of insurgents as well as large numbers of Mahdi Army militia members -- and Moqtada al-Sadr has yet to poke his head above ground: Coalition forces have detained about 700 members of the Mahdi Army, the largest Shiite militia in Baghdad, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Monday. The militia, which is loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and has clashed with U.S. troops in the past, has mostly avoided a direct confrontation with American and Iraqi government forces, Gen. David Petraeus said in an interview with USA TODAY. Some of the militia's top leaders have left the capital, and Iraqi government officials are negotiating with al-Sadr's political organization in an effort to disband the militia, Petraeus said. "I think in part one reason that al-Sadr's militia has been lying low … is due to some of the discussions being held," Petraeus said in a telephone interview from Iraq. "It's also in part due to some of the leaders leaving Baghdad" and others being arrested, he said. The seven hundred Mahdis are only the tip of the iceberg. The White House estimated that 16,000 other insurgents are held by US and Iraqi forces as well, making this sweep an early success. In fact, the burgeoning numbers of detainees require the US to send more military police to guard them... captainsquartersblog.com ---- Now just because their is some early positive signs, doesn't mean I'm really changing my previous reaction to your ideas about measuring the success of the surge. You won't really know how well it works for some time. Early positive change can reverse, as could early failures if that was what we where experiencing. Both sides in the debate about Iraq have made two much of one particular bit of news, or one particular short term trend. What I quoted above is good news, but once important is that it actually starts a positive trend, and isn't just a short term phenomenon.