Petraeus vs. CAP

[Neil D]

The Petraeus Report: CLAIM vs. FACT by CAP

[Neil D]

The following is an ad put out by the MoveOn.Org regarding General Petraeus. I wonder if there is any substance to this ad? MoveOn.Org thinks so.....

General Petraeus or General Betray Us?

Cooking the books for the White House

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress“ in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.”

Washington Post, “Battling for Iraq,” by David H. Petraeus. 9/26/04 (see below)

And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq , said ”We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”

The Australian, “Surge Working: Top US General,” by Dennis Shanahan. 8/31/07

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed.

GAO report, 9/4/07

NIE report, 8/23/07

Jones report, CSIS, 9/6/07

Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count.

“Time to Take a Stand,” by Paul Krugman. 9/7/07

The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you're shot in the back of the head -- not the front.

“Experts Doubt Drop in Violence in Iraq,” by Karen DeYoung. 9/6/07 l

According to news reports, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there.

The Associated Press, “Violence Appears to Be Shifting from Baghdad.” 8/25/07

National Public Radio, “Statistics the Weapon of Choice in Surge Debate,” by Guy Raz. 9/6/07

Associated Press, “Key Figures About Iraq Since the War Began in 2003.” 9/5/07

We'll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won't hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.

Newsweek, “Baghdad’s New Owners,” by Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow, 9/10/07

Ibid from the AP, “Violence Appears to be Shifting From Baghdad”

McClatchy, “Despite Violence Drop, Officers See Bleak Future for Iraq,” by Leila Fadel. 8/15/07

The New York Times, “More Iraqis Said to Flee Since Troop Rise,” by James Glanz and Stephen Farrell. 8/24/07

Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows; Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.

We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops.

The New York Times, “Petraeus, Seeing Gains in Iraq as Fragile, is Wary of Cuts,” by David Sanger and David Cloud, 9/7/07

The Washington Post, “Petraeus Open to Pullout of One Brigade,” by Robin Wright and Jonathan Weisman. 9/7/07.

But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.

The Hill, “Rep. Schakowsky: Petraeus hints at decade-long Iraq presence,” by Patrick FitzGerald. 8/10/07

Today before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.

[Neil D]

Key Figures About Iraq

By The Associated Press – Sep 5, 2007

Key figures about Iraq since the war began in March 2003:

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

August 2007: 164,000

January 2007: 137,000

CASUALTIES:

_Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of Sept. 4, 2007: 3,739

_Confirmed U.S. military wounded as of Sept. 4, 2007: 27,662

_U.S. military deaths for August 2007: 83

_Deaths of civilian employees of U.S. government contractors as of June 30, 2007: 1,001.

_Iraqi civilian deaths: Estimated at more than 66,000, with one controversial study last year contending there were as many as 655,000. According to Associated Press figures, there were at least 1,975 Iraqi deaths in August 2007.

_Assassinated Iraqi academics: 331.

_Journalists killed on assignment: 112.

COST:

_Stepped-up military operations are costing about $12 billion a month, with Iraq accounting for $10 billion per month, according to U.S. congressional analysis.

_Total cost to the U.S. government so far is more than $448 billion. A January 2007 study by Linda Bilmes of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government put the total projected cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at $350 billion to $700 billion.

OIL PRODUCTION:

_Prewar: 2.58 million barrels per day.

_Aug. 22, 2007: 1.15 million barrels per day. (Power outages on August 16 and 17 affected crude oil production.)

ELECTRICITY:

_Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): four to eight.

_Aug. 14, 2007, nationwide: 4,110 megawatts. Hours per day: 10.

_Prewar Baghdad: 2,500 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): 16-24.

_Aug. 14, 2007, Baghdad: Megawatts not available. Hours per day: 6.1.

_Note: Current Baghdad and nationwide megawatt figures are no longer reported by the U.S. State Department's Iraq Weekly Status Report.

TELEPHONES:

_Prewar land lines: 833,000.

_March 13, 2007: 1,111,000.

_Prewar cell phones: 80,000.

_March 13, 2007: 8,720,038.

WATER:

_Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.

_July 13, 2007: 15.4 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

_Prewar: 6.2 million people served.

_July 13, 2007: 11.3 million people served.

INTERNAL REFUGEES:

_Aug. 28, 2007: According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, approximately 2.2 million people. An estimated 750,000 have been internally displaced since the beginning of 2006.

_Aug. 25, 2007: The Iraqi Red Crescent says the number of registered displaced families inside Iraq doubled since January 1, 2007 — from 447,337 to 1,138,000 as of July 31, 2007.

EMIGRANTS:

_Prewar: 500,000 Iraqis living abroad.

_Aug. 28, 2007: More than 2 million in neighboring countries.

___

Sources: The Associated Press, State Department, Defense Department, Department of Energy, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, The Brookings Institution, Iraq Body Count, The Lancet, Iraqi ministries of health and education, U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, U.N. High Commission for Refugees, Committee to Protect Journalists, Harvard University, Economist Intelligence Unit, National Priorities Project, International Telecommunication Union, The Brussels Tribunal, USAID, Iraqi Red Crescent, Office of the Secretary of Defense.

AP researchers Julie Reed and Rhonda Shafner in New York compiled this report.

[Neil D]

Baghdad's New Owners

Shiites now dominate the once mixed capital, and there is little chance of reversing the process.

By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow

Newsweek

Sept. 10, 2007 issue - It was their last stand. Kamal and a handful of his neighbors were hunkered down on the roof of a dun-colored house in southwest Baghdad two weeks ago as bullets zinged overhead. In the streets below, fighters from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fanned out and blasted away with AK-47s and PKC heavy machine guns. Kamal is a chubby 44-year-old with two young sons, and he and his friends, all Sunnis, had been fighting similar battles against Shiite militiamen in the Amel neighborhood for months. They jumped awkwardly from rooftop to rooftop, returning fire. Within minutes, however, dozens of uniformed Iraqi policemen poured into the street to support the militiamen. Kamal ditched his AK on a rooftop and snuck away through nearby alleys. He left Amel the next day. "I lost my house, my documents and my future," says Kamal, whose name and that of other Iraqis in this story have been changed for their safety. "I'm never going back."

Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually "has increased the IDPs to some extent."

When Gen. David Petraeus goes before Congress next week to report on the progress of the surge, he may cite a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad as one marker of success. In fact, part of the reason behind the decline is how far the Shiite militias' cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they've essentially won. "If you look at pre-February 2006, there were only a couple of areas in the city that were unambiguously Shia," says a U.S. official in Baghdad who is familiar with the issue but is not authorized to speak on the record. "That's definitely not the case anymore." The official says that "the majority, more than half" of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now Shiite-dominated, a judgment echoed in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: "And very few are mixed." In places like Amel, pockets of Sunnis live in fear, surrounded by a sea of Shiites. In most of the remaining Sunni neighborhoods, residents are trapped behind great concrete barricades for their own protection.

Amel's transformation is one of the most dramatic in the city. Under Saddam Hussein the area was a bedroom community for regime apparatchiks—generals and officers like Kamal, who worked for one of Saddam's secret services. Spacious houses were arranged in grids around schools and recreation centers, fronted by palm trees and wide sidewalks. Saddam trusted the community: houses nestle up against the strategic highway that leads to the airport, and are only a short distance away from the Republican Palace complex that dominates the Green Zone. Now Amel's Sunnis are crowded into a strip that's less than a quarter-mile square, surrounded on all sides by concertina wire and scrap-metal barricades. City power cables have been cut, and the streets are strewn with trash and broken glass. There is only one access road not under Shiite control, leading to the airport highway. The enclave houses perhaps 5,000 Sunnis; nearly all the rest of Amel's estimated 100,000 population is now Shiite. With the agreement of locals, U.S. troops plan to replace the Sunnis' makeshift roadblocks with concrete barriers.

MSNBC link on ethnic cleansing