Posted on 08/22/2008 12:35:10 PM PDT by Starman417
The NYT's have finally admitted what pretty much everyone has already figured out for themselves. The surge has worked. But all that we have gained, all we have achieved could be undone by a precipitous withdrawal:
Yet for all the signs of fatigue, General Petraeus is preparing to leave Iraq a remarkably safer place than it was when he arrived. Violence has plummeted from its apocalyptic peaks, Iraqi leaders are asserting themselves, and streets that once seemed dead are flourishing with life. The worst, for now, has been averted.And so in the general’s exhaustion comes the glimmer of hope, and also a caveat: Iraq has indeed stepped back from self-destruction, General Petraeus said, but the gains are tenuous and unlikely to survive without an American effort that outlasts his tenure. By the time he leaves for the United States next month to assume overall command of American forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, he will have spent a total of 48 months in Iraq since the war began.
“I don’t know that it was a death spiral, but I mean it was a pretty dire situation,” General Petraeus said, referring to the situation upon his arrival here as the senior commander in Iraq in February 2007. “There have been very substantial gains at this point. Don’t take any of this to imply that we think we’re anywhere near finished.”
“It’s not durable yet. It’s not self-sustaining,” he added. “You know — touch wood — there is still a lot of work to be done.”
His run as commander coincided with the “surge” of American combat forces into Baghdad, in what amounted to a last, desperate gamble to bring the country under control.
The arrival of the 30,000 extra soldiers, deployed to Baghdad’s neighborhoods around the clock, allowed the Americans to exploit a series of momentous events that had begun to unfold at roughly the same time: the splintering of Moktada al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army; the growing competence of the Iraqi Army; and most important, the about-face by leaders of the country’s Sunni minority, who suddenly stopped opposing the Americans and joined with them against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other local extremist groups.
The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now: violence, measured in the number of attacks against Americans and Iraqis each week, has dropped by 80 percent in the country since early 2007, according to figures the general provided. Civilian deaths, which peaked at more than 100 a day in late 2006, have also plunged. Car and suicide bombings, which stoked sectarian violence, have fallen from a total of 130 in March 2007 to fewer than 40 last month. In July, fewer Americans were killed in Iraq — 13 — than in any month since the war began.
The result, now visible in the streets, is a calm unlike any the country has seen since the American invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The signs — Iraqi families flooding into parks at sundown, merchants throwing open long-shuttered shops — are stunning to anyone who witnessed the country’s implosion in 2005 and 2006.
ALL BUSH'S FAULT
Well, that only took a year eh? A year to admit that the strategy President Bush approved worked. A year in which Michael Yon and other's throughout the country were reporting on the decline of violence and the success of the surge. A year in which the NYT's and other liberal rags refused to admit it.
But now they have. And even with the caveat that it all can be undone in a blink of an eye.
(Excerpt) Read more at Flopping Aces...
Gee, business for these America-hating socialists must be bad...so bad in fact, they must start printing the TRUTH AND REALITY....shocking.
Desperate? Hardly! The previous MO was to patrol an area, looking for bad guys and then retreat to our bases at night. In that arena, it was very Vietnam-esque and failed as miserably as it did in Vietnam.
Petraeus had a plan to actually OCCUPY the city. Not just parts, but the WHOLE CITIES, one section at a time, cleaning out each section and getting it somewhat stable, bringing in the Iraqi police and involving the citizens and then moving to the next section. And once that city is secure, moving to the next city.
Hopefully, our military has learned that when invading hostile lands, you must pacify by complete occupation.
That would be Punchy Sulzberger.
Desperate? Hardly! The previous MO was to patrol an area....
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Hi B of T -— you missed my target, which was the NYT, not our military!!! Sorry for the confusion :-)
No, I didn’t. My point that it wasn’t a “desperate, last ditch attempt”. It was well thought out and calculated ahd had a high probability of success.
God Bless President Bush and our brave troops.
God bless America.
“The NYT’s Finally Admits The Obvious”
When will the NYT admit that it’s just a partisan mouth piece for Democrats?
This election is about Judgement and Security of the American People. John McCain should make this Extremely clear to America in his pick for VP (General David Patraeus). Wins in a landslide and completely changes the Physche of America regarding the situation in Iraq.
Notice the word "coincided"? The NYT makes is sound fortuitous, almost coincidental. C'mon Guys, It was HIS plan fer cryin' out loud! Moreover Gen. Petreaus EXECUTED the plan.
Oh, and 1 more thing: Bush APPROVED the plan -- so he gets credit, too. Not that NYT editorial group is going to admit that.
The MSM is months or years behind the power curve in Iraq.
Just a few days ago, an Iraqi governor made a comment to the effect that the US could leave right now and Iraq would be fine. The trouble was that it was open to two interpretations.
The first was “Yankee go home!”, but I don’t think that this was the right one, because the governor pointed out that Iraq still has two or three gaping holes in their defenses that they need the US to fill, which is quite correct. And seeing things from *that* point of view, his statement was that “Iraq is almost able to defend ourselves on our own”.
The first interpretation is rudeness, but the second is learned confidence and pride, something very different.
I knew long ago that the US military, having been badly burned by the betrayal of our South Vietnamese allies by a treacherous Democrat congress, resulting in their destruction and subjugation; that they were NOT, now way, no how, going to let it happen again to the Iraqis.
And for years now, the military has done everything in its power to insure that the Iraqis will be able to beat anything that the Iranians can throw at them, the Iranians being the only serious threat in the region.
And that even Turkey would have serious reservations about fighting the Iraqi military.
Perhaps the most important gift the US military has given the Iraqi military, is one few civilians would grasp, but is an astounding force multiplier, and priceless knowledge.
The largest coherent military unit that can be fielded in the ME, excepting Turkey and Israel, is the brigade, about 5000 men. Anything larger is very difficult to command, and only the top armies in the world can do so.
In the ME, these brigades are lumped together into larger units, called divisions, but they are just divisions on paper. They have no divisional command. Except in Iraq. For two or three years, we have been training Iraqi divisional commands to conduct division level operations. And once they were trained, then they practiced division level operations, to insure they knew what to do.
But why does this matter? A unified division of four brigades will likely defeat two or even three times its size in separate brigades. That is, a unified division of four brigades will defeat between eight and twelve enemy brigades, just because it works as a team.
And the US military didn’t stop there. They then organized the trained divisions into the next largest unit, the Corps. And we trained the Iraqis to have a unified Corps command, and they conducted Corps sized operations, and we watched over them the whole time to insure they knew what they were doing.
Iraq now has THREE Corps commands. Good heavens. Turkey only has one that is operationally ready.
Congress betrayed the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam, and because of it, many good soldiers died and their people were subjugated. And the US military still burns with anger over this, and will not let it happen again.
Iraq still needs a combat air force. And we have likely been training their pilots in the US, with the aircraft they will eventually have. When they go home, they will take those aircraft with them, to fully operational and secure air bases.
And then there is nothing the US congress can do, short of declaring war against Iraq, that could betray them or their military. And if congress did this, it would be interesting to see who they would get to do the fighting. Obama’s new Civilian Service Corps?
Because the US military would tell them to go to hell.
Combat aircraft must not mandatorily mean manned aircraft. U.S. pilots in Nevada will still be flying UCAVs remotely over Iraq long after the U.S. has secured Iraq and left victoriously.
So by that view, Iraq already has a world class air force operating.
550 metric tons of yellowcake taken out by US forces. Why no mention, ever!
Air to ground for UAVs. However, air-to-air still needs combat pilots against the Iranian air force. The hint came when an Iraqi air force colonel and his family deserted from Maxwell AFB in Alabama last year, where he, and presumably other Iraqi AF were being instructed.
Otherwise, if we were training combat pilots, I suspect we would be doing so in Texas, where we train a lot of foreign combat pilots.
Early on in the occupation, the Iranians systematically hunted down and assassinated all of the Baathist Iraqi pilots, one at a time. This shows how concerned they were that Iraq would have a combat AF, like the one that punished them during the Iran-Iraq war.
For this reason, we built very modern air bases in Iraq, that are fully functional and ready to be staffed with Iraqi ground and maintenance personnel when we turn them over to Iraq. All they would then need are trained pilots and planes, and instant air force.
And the Iranians couldn’t do a damn thing about it except with ballistic missiles. Which is another big gap the US is filling right now—a THICK layered missile defense against Iran.
AMEN!
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