The surge..

I am so tired of hearing about giving bush credit for the surge.I guess they think a lot of us forgot what happened before the surge. I give him credit for all of the children and families he murdered chasing after Sadaam hussein.,

I still remember when he left a hole in the ground where a family was with his bunker busting bomb just because he thought hussein was underground. How many got killed before the surge. I still remember when he didn't want other countries to help in a certain a manner and they began to leave.

I still remember when the head of the UN peacekeepers was killed as he sat at his desk (I believe that is the name of the group that helps in wars) I still remember everytime he and cheney,rumsfeld,mccain,lieberman and all the rest lied,and lied and lied,.

I still remember when Bush/Cheney/Israel started the war in lebanon and blew the people out of their homes. I still remember the little girl whose limbs were blown off and the viens were hanging from her limbs as she lay dead as the people were trapped and they continued to bomb,but when ONE of the Israel soldiers was killed,it was the end of the world and they bombed even more. GO TO HELL BUSH!!! I can remember more..

wants pats on the back for the surge. First, it is not at all clear that the surge worked (where is the political stability?) or that it is largely responsible for the slowdown in violence.

Second, Obama was not necessarily wrong about the surge...his claim was that it may not be necessary, that Iraq violence could either increase or decrease on its own based on other factors.

Third...your main point is a good one that msm is missing entirely... that a war with hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of cultural treasure, destruction of institutions, creation of millions of refugees, torture, upheaval of economies, fomenting of sectarian violence, use of white phosporous, mismanagement, dehumanization of a people, siphoning of billions of dollars, an illegal and immoral beginning...can somehow be spun into a small disgusting argument of how wrong Obama was on Bush's surge. It is insane. (BTW...check out Paul Begala's rage against Fleischer last night on AC360 on just this point).

showdown last night between Fareed and Gergen,who I have been trying to shine the light on for a while now..

...who could know you might ask.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4918476


When will they get applauded?

Study Of Satellite Imagery Casts Doubt On Surge's Success In Baghdad
ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2008)

— By tracking the amount of light emitted by Baghdad neighborhoods at night, a team of UCLA geographers has uncovered fresh evidence that last year's U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as some U.S. officials have maintained.

Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit, the team reports in a new study based on publicly available satellite imagery.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and authority on ethnic conflict. "By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left."

The night-light signature in four other large Iraqi cities — Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala — held steady or increased between the spring of 2006 and the winter of 2007, the UCLA team found. None of these cities were targets of the surge.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080919074830.htm



Has the Surge Really Worked?

"...That still leaves the question: Has the surge really worked? I suppose if one looks exclusively at short-run casualty figures in Iraq, one could argue it did. It would work even better if the United States could send in another 200,000 troops. But the United States does not have another 200,000 troops to send in. And its collaborating countries have been withdrawing their troops, not sending more in. Of course, if you bribe a whole lot of Sunni sheiks, they will be on the U.S. side for the time being. And if you institutionalize ethnic expulsions, as in Baghdad, there is less room for some of the kinds of inter-Iraqi violence that had been previously occurring. And if Moqtada al-Sadr thinks it is wiser to bide his time, there will be a temporary reduction in the kind of violence that had been occurring before.


But look at what has happened elsewhere in the Middle East because of the surge. In November of 2006, the United States and NATO had been congratulating themselves on the success of their efforts in Afghanistan. But since then, two things have happened. The number of U.S. casualties has soared, passing now those in Iraq. So has violence against Afghans. Suddenly the Taliban are back in a big way. And now, for the first time since 2001, the pundits are talking about the possibility of the U.S. losing the war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq..."

http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Iraq&article=1280




Just my dos centavos


robdogbucky

and don't want us to inform those who have/had no idea what was going on at the time I made it my business to watch everyday..