Yesterday, Dean Barnett posted a piece on Iraq entitled "Progress in Iraq - Serious Stuff Here" for Hugh Hewitt's blog. It was a chart showing that the number of Iraqis identifying themselves as "Iraqis first" had increased to 54%. According to Barnett, "the Iraqi people have apparently turned a corner. Hopefully the Democrats in congress won’t choose to ignore this vital piece of information."
Barnett is engaged in what could be called "Cheney Standard Lying." Named after Dick Cheney, the Cheney Standard Lie occurs when someone takes a small fragment of information and tortures that information into supporting a large-scale claim that the perpetrator either knows to be false or (as was usually the case with Cheney) purposefully avoided attempting to verify. The Cheney Standard Lie is a specific technique that is quite distinct from the Gonzales Standard Lie of making an obviously false claim and daring opponents to prove the claim wrong or the Bush Standard Lie of just saying black is white and white is black (for example, "the United States does not torture").
Unfortunately for Barnett, there's a great deal of much more significant information suggesting that corners are not being turned in Iraq in relation to the surge.
1. The surge has made little if any progress in attaining its major objecive of securing Baghdad. The situation in Baghdad is so bad that those active in the "Save the Surge Campaign" haven't even tried to lie about it.
2. Far from giving Maliki breathing space to negotiate compromises with the Sunnis, the surge is gradually crushing the Maliki government. On the one hand, the Sadr bloc has withdrawn from the government because Maliki wouldn't set a deadline for U. S. withdrawal. The U. S. might view that as a good thing. But so has the Sunni bloc because Maliki wouldn't break up the Shiite militias (as if he could). Finally, the moderate/secular party led by Allawi is also withdrawing. The Maliki government has always been a fragile coalition. Pressures created by the surge are gradually pulling it apart.
3. The situation in Basra is deteriorating into Shiite civil war as the British wind down their deployment in Iraq's second-largest city. The British presence apparently served as a buffer between Sadr's Mahdi Army, SCIRI's Badr Brigades, and the other Shiite militias and as late as last February, Dick Cheney was touting Basra as a success. Under cover of the occupation, however, all of the militias were growing stronger and it appears that the outcome of British efforts is going to be a more intense civil war.
4. The broad statistics don't say much for the surge either. Juan Cole flags statistics on combat deaths for American troops in July from the blog of Foreign Policy magazine and it appears that substantially more Americans died in July 2007 than other years.
July 2003: 48
July 2004: 54
July 2005: 54
July 2006: 43
July 2007: 80
Iraqi civilian casualties have not decreased either. The 1,690 Iraqi civilian deaths in July were a 25% increase over the number of Iraqi civilian casualties for July 2006 and were also 25% greater than Iraqi civilian casualties for June 2007.
The statistics on Iraqi civilian casualties are particularly discouraging given that Sunni militias have joined the American side and that al-Sadr had ordered the Mahdi Army to stand down. Even though the U. S. caught two major breaks, we've not been able to capitalize.
5. It appears that the U. S. has not been able to increase the supply of electricity in the Baghdad area (no surprise actually given the lack of security). According to Robert Farley, the electricity situation in Baghdad is even worse than it was a year ago. Michael Totten claims that "the electrical grid supplies only one hour of power each day." With summer temperatures climbing up to 130, that's not a good thing at all.
One of the reasons Dick Cheney himself has been so eager to restrict access to information is that Cheney Standard Lying works best when information is strictly limited. Nevertheless, there is more than enough bits of information to suggest that the surge isn't having significantly more success than other American military strategies in Iraq.
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8 comments:
You know, you could have probably made a more convincing argument without all the Cheney lie stuff. Returning to it with such a flourish continues to point out your (willful or not) propensity to that confirmation bias I mentioned last post. I mean it's not like no other politician in the last say 20 minutes hasn't used the precise redirection of statistics you seemed so outraged about. And it certainly isn't limited to a particular party affiliation.
Lies, Damn Lies and all that.
The lack of power is likely due in part to it being summer, when, like us, the Iraqis are cranking the A/C. Though, the effects of frequent sabotage certainly share the blame.
The Sunni alliance also probably contributes to the civilian casualty. With more civilian targeting AQ, one would expect the numbers of civilian casualties to rise. While unfortunate, from one perspective it is not necessarily discouraging.
Overall, I'm not exceptionally hopeful about the whole adventure, but you seem to have your antennae out for signs of impending doom.
Why is it the least bit surprising that the sides are suffering increased casualties when we are more aggressively taking the fight to them, engaging them in a more proactive manner?
I love how your Leftists running the House and Senate passed the terrorist surveillance program, and then had the audacity to come out and say that they were against it, but were corned into supporting it. Nuance.
No nuance there. The Democratic leadership choked again. Of course, one could be charitable and say that the Dems were taking an issue away from the Republicans in 2008. But, I'm not THAT charitable.
Ef, I see your point about bringing up the "Cheney Standard ie" point. However, I also believe that it's extremely important to tie the right-wing blogs in with the Bush administration. That's a point that's not emphasized enough by progressive blogs.
Why attempt to tie the Bush administration to the right wing blogs. Either you can tie them together or not. As is, your writing just comes across as reflexively partisan.
^ what he said.
More on the blog tie in....
Are you concerned with the progressive blog/democratic party tie in. The left and right both have blogs that are heavily influenced by party insiders, blogs that while independant closely follow the party line, and blogs that are more independent in their thinking. Attempting to tie all right wing blogs to the Bush administration is as ridiculous as claiming that left blogs are directed by Hillary.
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