If they’re not good enough for you to bother linking them, how are they good enough for me to even bother reading them?

Really? I hadn’t even realized you had written anything. Looking back, I see some scribbles, but nothing of any substance.

Try again. Read the articles I discussed and the come back and tell me how wrong all of it is.

It would have to be sustainable if it wasn’t working.

And Petraeus is recommending that force levels in July be “paused” at 140,000, which is more than there were before the surge (and even that level was unsustainable).

That is incorrect. Current troop levels are 140,000. By July it will be 132K which is right where it was at in January of 2007 at the start of the surge. By the end of the year it will be lower.

There is no evidence that there has been any “return on success” at all;

There is plenty of evidence. You just choose to ignore it because it doesn’t fit the “we’ve lost” narrative that Barack Obama chooses to continue to spout. How it worked:

A. Violence is down 70%.
B. Al Qaeda has been expelled from Baghdad and the Anbar Province.
C. Sectarian violence is way down
D. Refugees are moving back by the thousands

The surge worked because Iraqi security forces were ready. It worked because Iraqi citizens have become tired of Al Qaeda and Jaysh al Mahdi and started providing beneficial tips to the ISF helping them leading to arrests of insurgents and discoveries of weapons caches. It worked because troops were more aggressive in dealing with the insurgents and Al Qaeda.

This was of course true. In 2007, before Sadr’s cease-fire in August 2007 changed the game, the surge made Iraq an even more violent and horrific place than it had been before the surge started (if you compare early 2007 to early 2006, it’s even worse).

Dude, this is 2008. The fact that there was a spike in violence at some point does not make Obama’s remarks true. That’s just asinine thinking. He was wrong. Very wrong. Deal with it.

but Iraq is still horrible and has no actual functioning government (except Iran’s government).

The surge killed lots of Iraqis and led to no actual political progress

Do you have any evidence to support this sophistry or is your thinking that simply writing something makes it true? Even the international community at the Stockholm Conference praised the progress Iraq has made over the last year.

Yeah, I read your article, and your conclusion doesn’t hold. Can we conclude that May was a good month in Iraq? Yes. Can we conclude from two data points that there is a continuing downward trend? No. For all we know, this could be a statistical anomaly. We need more data before we can make any conclusions. Data, of course, which you will no doubt refuse to provide.

SO you’re pro-terrorist? Ok then.

Our family got our dog 7 years ago. Coincidence? I think not!

And Jay, Ferris, if we’ve “won” in Iraq, why not bring the troops home? Shits and giggles?

The reason they left without being replaced is that the surge was never meant to be sustainable. These troop levels have been maintained as long as they possibly could be. And Petraeus is recommending that force levels in July be “paused” at 140,000, which is more than there were before the surge (and even that level was unsustainable). There is no evidence that there has been any “return on success” at all; return on success would be drawing down below pre-surge levels, which is impossible because the surge has done nothing to stabilize Iraq.

Your assertion that attacks are at the same level as in 2005 and and that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war is either you showing an astounding level of ignorance or just plain dishonesty. The violence levels now are at their lowest point since early in 2004,

That’s not actually true. While Icasualties’ list of Iraqi deaths is much lower than the actual figures (there are a lot of deaths that aren’t counted as Iraqi civilian deaths), it shows 396 civilians as dying in May, one of the best months, true – but according to that same chart, 257 civilians died in March 2005 and 301 in April 2005. After the Iraqi elections of 2005, the violence was at a level that was high, but low enough to lead to false claims that we were “winning.” Just like now, when more Iraqi civilians are being killed.

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraqis going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

This was of course true. In 2007, before Sadr’s cease-fire in August 2007 changed the game, the surge made Iraq an even more violent and horrific place than it had been before the surge started (if you compare early 2007 to early 2006, it’s even worse).

So the surge caused a spike in Iraq violence, and then Iraq violence subsided to merely horrific 2005 levels, but Iraq is still horrible and has no actual functioning government (except Iran’s government). If we had withdrawn, there would also have been a spike in Iraq violence, but a U.S. withdrawal would have allowed the Iraqis to form an actual government, which they can’t do while they’re under foreign occupation.

So Obama was proposing something that would have killed fewer Iraqis than the surge and would have led to political progress. The surge killed lots of Iraqis and led to no actual political progress (except fraudulent legislation like the De-Ba’athification legislation, which was actually meant to keep Sunnis out of the government). So what exactly did the surge succeed in doing, except bringing back the horrific status quo of 2005 where we need to withdraw but defeatist conservatives won’t hear of it?

There IS political progress in Iraq and there has been much success with the Iraqi military taking over much of the fighting in many areas. It is the reason why three of the five combat brigades that made up the surge have left without being replaced. The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Divison of Fort Lewis, Wa., has begun to leave Iraq and so has the 2nd Brigade, 3rd ID, Fort Stweart, Ga. Petraeus is recommending that more troops come home by years end.

Your assertion that attacks are at the same level as in 2005 and and that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war is either you showing an astounding level of ignorance or just plain dishonesty. The violence levels now are at their lowest point since early in 2004, a 70% drop since the surge (the surge Democrats still say didn’t work). Sectarian violence is down so much so that thousands of families that were displaced due to the violence are now returning. And this is the ’seriousness’ of which Barack Obama takes with regard to national security:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraqis going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Wow. Stunningly wrong.

Iraq- with virtually no air force, no navy, with barely one-third its pre-Gulf War strength.

Oh yeah, what was it that their neighbors were so worrried about? Well, as the Arab League* put it:

“We have discussed that there are certain threats to a number of our countries … and we said we are not going to accept any military action against any other country, including Iraq.”

They didnt seem too worried.

*(Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait)

You have links to prove this, of course.

Actually, Jay, political progress has gotten less likely, not more. The Sunnis once again withdrew from parliament. Maliki ignored the groups that were carrying out attacks in Iraq and instead decided to send an army to kill his political opponents in advance of an election. (And after the Basra operation originally failed, we helped him kill his political opponents until the Iraqi army was ready to take over.) And Maliki is an Iranian puppet, much more so than the more pro-Iraqi Sadr.

We invaded a country that was an anti-Islamist dictatorship (which was very bad but hadn’t sponsored an act of anti-American terrorism in years) and made it by any standard worse off than it was even under that horrible dictatorship. We used the resources we should have been using against Bin Laden to take out one of the obstacles to Bin Laden’s Caliphate. And we’ve been killing Iraqis who pose no threat to America and claiming that they were really “Al-Qaeda” and would “follow us home.”

So how are we “winning,” Jay? The number of attacks in Iraq now, even now, are at the same level as in early 2005. That’s when National Review wrote a story called “We’re winning: How the U.S. learned the art of counterinsurgency.” The strategy we were pursuing then was very much the same as the failed Petraeus strategy: try to reduce casualties and dicker around until the next round of explosions. It didn’t work, because Iraq will never have actual progress until America leaves. A country under a hated foreign occupation (Japan & Germany = not the same thing) can’t stabilize itself.

You don’t understand that, Jay, because you and McCain and Bush think war is a video game, where you either “win” or “lose.” In the real world, Iraq is in a civil war (at a lower level than in the dark days of early 2007, when the surge caused more Iraqis to die, but still pretty bad) and America can’t “win” or “lose” an Iraqi civil war, and we don’t have an actual “enemy” to fight in Iraq. Those who actually take national security seriously, like Obama or Clinton, know that the only recourse is to get out; McCain wants the humiliating defeat of America (by keeping us there forever), so he wants us to stay there just because we’re “only” losing 20 soldiers a month and Iraq is “only” at the civil war level of 2005, when we were also not “winning.”

What else needs to be accomplished?

write not wright….

No actually that’s Oliver’s plan who is always saying, “We should be out fighting terrorists in other countries.”

Yes, Iraq before was a stable dictatorship, brutal but not a threat.

Right. Helping to fund terrorism wasn’t a threat. It was just brutal. Thanks for the heaping tablespoon of stupid.

It is now an unstable terror haven with no clear path to stability.

Actually, it isn’t a terror ‘haven’ as the surge that you and other liberals claim didn’t work, obviously did work. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has done an outstanding job of building coalitions across sectarian divides, helping to quash Shiite militias in southern Iraq and Sadr City and has he has basically told Iran to stay the hell out. It’s like you just totally want to ignore what has happened there over the last 15-18 months.

Oh sorry, I’m supposed to believe Al Qaeda is weak because George Bush says so?

Oh brother. Actually, perhaps you should READ a little instead of spouting DNC and Obama press releases. Check out ‘The Unraveling’ by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank as well as ‘The Rebellion Within’ by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker.

For years now, conservatives have sought to drown out this dialog by yelling VICTORY!!! with nothing to back it up. The McCain campaign is the latest iteration of this strategy and all it does is hurt America.

Wonderful. You’ve proven that you can wright campaign ads. Of course, you’ve provided no facts or point of reference to support your assertions.

Sort of an offset collision, seeing as how Head on would have been in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

You mean like the operations the CIA has been carrying out on the border of those two countries since January? The ones that killed Al Qaeda leaders Abu Laith al-Libi and Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi? Like that?

Oh sorry, I’m supposed to believe Al Qaeda is weak because George Bush says so? As the president who presided over Al Qaeda’s most potent attack ever, pardon me if I don’t roll over in capitulation.

The conservative/Republican refrain that if you ignore the almost 5,000 dead Americans for no real strategic or moral goal, the Iraq war is a great success are the equivalent of asking Mrs. Lincoln how the show went, despite that unpleasantness with Mr. Booth.

For years now, conservatives have sought to drown out this dialog by yelling VICTORY!!! with nothing to back it up. The McCain campaign is the latest iteration of this strategy and all it does is hurt America.