• That’s what we’re saying, but are we sure?

  See, we’ve heard similar claims before, but they ultimately just move back in. And since we’re going to draw down the troops who helped get the terrorists out, this feels like another case of temporary good news that could very well give way to chaos yet again.

  From the NY Times:
  

  BAGHDAD, Nov. 7 — American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad, a top American general said today, allowing American troops involved in the “surge” to depart as planned.

  Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., commander of United States forces in Baghdad, also said that American troops had yet to clear some 13 percent of the city, including Sadr City and several other areas controlled by Shiite militias. But, he said, “there’s just no question” that violence had declined since a spike in June.

  “Murder victims are down 80 percent from where they were at the peak,” and attacks involving improvised bombs are down 70 percent, he said.

  See, this is the problem with treating al Qaeda as if it were a nation. It’s not as if we pushed Germany out of France, and we all know the terrorists have simply moved into some other area with fewer troops. That’s what they do. And as we continue to stay in Iraq, new people will join al Qaeda and they’ll be able to move into Baghdad and begin to wreak havoc.

  Yep, I’m a gloom and doomer, and it’s specifically because we’ve never figured out a way to solve this problem. Because folks, this isn’t a solution, it’s merely a band-aid. Sure, deaths have decreased in the short term, but our expenditures keep increasing and our all volunteer force is being decimated by PTSD.

  And again, let’s not forget that the surge was meant to create an atmosphere so the Iraqis could build a solid government.

  Has that happened?
  

  And though Sunni extremist groups could revive and “reinfest very quickly,” General Fil said, Iraq’s leaders should now have the peace they need to build a trusted, cross-sectarian government. But progress toward that, he said, has been “disappointing.”

  Disappointing means no. And we’ll continue to see “disappointing” results and our soldiers will keep dying and we’ll continue to fall deeper into debt.

  Again, it’s good that al Qaeda is out of Baghdad, but it should have been us out of their first.

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• 

  This is sure to ruffle some feathers:
  

  WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

  Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

  Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year.

  Of course Bush won’t listen, but this is Pace planting a flag in the ground saying our presence in Iraq is hurting our chances for response to new threats…
  

  According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military’s ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

  Will Bush ignore his Defense Secretary too?

  More as it develops…

  UPDATE:
  Al Jazeera is reporting that Pace hasn’t made up his mind yet…
  

  The most senior military officer in the US has denied a report saying he has decided to recommend a reduction in US troops serving in Iraq.

  Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was expected to recommend to George Bush that troops be reduced to less than 100,000 next year, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

  “The story is wrong. It is speculative. I have not made nor decided on any recommendation yet,” Pace said in a statement.

  This doesn’t mean he won’t recommend what the LA Times reported, but it’s an interesting development.

  I wonder who leaked the info about Pace in the first place?

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• There’s been a lot of ranting about Iran providing arms to Iraqi insurgents, though so far all the “proven” cases seem to evaporate as soon as they’ve left the headlines.  But there’s one source of weapons for those fighting us in Iraq that’s been reliable from the beginning. Us.

  The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.

  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.

  It’s not just automatic rifles and handguns that are missing.  There’s also enough unaccounted body armor and helmets for the insurgents to field an armored force almost as large as that of the US.  Many of those using this gear have also been the recipients of US training.

  As the war drags on, the forces US troops are facing get better equipped and better trained, thanks to billions expended to equip and arm them.  With enemies like this, why would the insurgents need friends?

  

  
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• Despite what the right wants to think, it’s hard to imagine there’s a person in the United States who isn’t wishing for a miracle in Iraq.  When the Iraqi soccer team won the Asia Cup earlier this week, the images on our TVs were a sweet relief to the usual scenes out of Baghdad.  Going into Iraq was wrong.  Staying in Iraq is wrong.  That doesn’t mean I would not be ecstatic if peace settled over Iraq today.  Personally, I’d  risk the idea that it might encourage future military action, suffer through years of smarminess, and consume any amount of crow if it only brought an end to the violence.  Both the lives of our military, and those of the people of Iraq, are worth far more than my ability to spout “I told you so.”

  The big difference between left and right is not in their wishes for a peaceful Iraq, it’s in acceptance of reality even when that reality is unpleasant.  Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between what we wish for Iraq, and what’s really happening in Iraq.

  Three bomb attacks in Baghdad today killed more than 65 people, as sectarian and militant violence continued to rage in Iraq.

  …

  a fuel tanker truck packed with explosives rammed a line of waiting cars at a filling station in Mansour. The resulting explosion sent a sheet of flames and black smoke 50 feet in the air, and could be heard miles away. At least 50 people were killed and 60 more were wounded in the attack, news agencies reported.  

  …

  One of the bombs detonated in Baghdad today was in a car outside a popular ice cream shop in the central district of Karrada. The explosion killed at least 15 people and injured more than 35. Another attack in the neighborhood last week killed 60

  …

  a suicide car bombing Wednesday in Karada, a Shiite section of Baghdad, killed at least 17 people, police said.

  …

  In the southern Baghdad district of Doura, a parked-car bomb killed three people and wounded five, Reuters reported, citing the police.

  …

  On Tuesday in Salahaddin Province, 18 men from Balad were abducted by gunmen, who had established fake checkpoints, the police said today.

  And as the wave of violence grows worse, so does the situation for the Iraqi government.  

  The Shiite-led government that is trying to cope with the violence, meanwhile, suffered a political setback today, when the largest Sunni Arab political bloc in the parliament followed through on a threat to walk out of the coalition cabinet that is trying to unify the country.

  Other segments, including Moktada al-Sadr’s Shiite faction have already pulled members from the cabinet and threatened to withdraw from the governing coalition.  If these groups follow through on such threats, it could mean a collapse of the current government and another round of voting — not a situation that would lead to rapid progress on any of the issues still dividing Iraq.

  But don’t worry.  I’m sure that in some rainbow-colored room, the administration is still coming up with figures to show that this represents progress.  Hey, more purple fingers!

  While the advocates of staying in Iraq search for statistics that can bolster their position, here’s a pair of numbers they should consider: 38 and 300,000.  That’s the number of years and the number of British soldiers that have served in Northern Ireland.  Northern Ireland is thirty times smaller than Iraq, holds only a fifteenth of Iraq’s population, has only a single border, contains only two major factions, and is much more familiar to the British than Iraq is to the United States.  And still it took 38 years to reach a political settlement and “end operations,” by which they mean there will still be a residual force of around 5,000 troops.

  Anyone willing to predict the numbers that will result should we “stay the course” in Iraq until peace is won?  Should we be predicting the year in which America would leave Iraq, or the century?

  

  
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• 
  The U.S. military says it has more evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq:

  Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

  Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

  There are three main bits of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement:

  1. The sophistication of the attack itself, using English-speaking attackers wearing stolen U.S. uniforms and armed with detailed knowledge of the base’s operations. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d normally expect the Shiite militias to pull off by themselves.

  2. Militant testimony. Much of the additional proof is based on what the military says captured militants revealed under interrogation. According to them, the militans all report receiving aid from Iran or working on behalf of Iran. Damning stuff, but this is the weakest link in the chain, because there’s no independent confirmation of the accounts and there’s always the suspicion that “interrogation” actually means “torture” and thus the resulting information is suspect.

  3. The fact that one of the captured militants, Ali Mussa DaqDuq, is a senior Hezbollah bombmaker. This is direct evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement. However, it is only indirect evidence of Iranian involvement. It’s always possible to argue that Hezbollah was acting on its own. On the other hand, several observers note that Hezbollah had little to gain from getting involved in Iraq; angering the United States would not help its efforts in Lebanon, and meddling in Iraq would make it seem more like the Iranian puppet it has long denied being.

  (continued at Midtopia)

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