General David Petraeus still lying about progress

Gareth Porter has uncovered a US military document that confirms Gen. Petraeus misled Americans repeatedly in 2010 about supposed progress under his command. It is part of a long pattern of seemingly deliberate deception by Petraeus.

The document, a graph from Task Force 435, demonstrates that the vast majority of Afghans captured during the 2010 surge, initially identified as Taliban fighters, were released by the US military within two weeks. The rate of release within 2 weeks was about 80%. It’s something that the Task Force commander himself acknowledged publicly last November. Porter calculates that subsequent reviews by the US military led to the release of at least another 10% of those initial prisoners within a few months. So the US military recognized that its operations in 2010 had detained large numbers of innocents and no more than 10% of these prisoners were actually associated with the Taliban.

But David Petraeus suppressed that information. Instead, in August 2010 and then again in December 2010 Petraeus released the inflated figures for prisoners and pretended that these represented the number of Taliban fighters who’d been captured. In other words, he deliberately misled the public by reporting 10 times as many Taliban fighters in custody as were actually captured.

Petraeus’ numbers for Talibans killed may also be inflated, though there is no documentation available to serve as a check on those assertions.

Petraeus has a record of deceiving the public. In 2007, when he was under pressure to show progress after six months of the surge in Iraq, Petraeus made a deceptive presentation to Congress. Though that presentation was greatly hyped in advance, it turned out to be extremely flimsy. He provided no written report, and instead showed Congress a series of slides that purported to represent progress in suppressing violence in Iraq, especially in Baghdad.

The problem was, as I revealed at the time, Petraeus’ slides for rates of violence in Baghdad were deceptive. They color-coded the city neighborhoods by sectarian majorities, and on Petraeus’ slides those neighborhoods all remained unchanged during the surge. That was a falsification of the largest factor in the ongoing civil war, the ongoing sectarian cleansing of Baghdad neighborhoods – which reached a peak during the very period Petraeus was reporting upon.

The Pentagon had already produced accurate slides portraying violence on correctly color-coded neighborhoods (for the so-called Jones Report). So it is hard to see why Petraeus’ slides should have been so deceptive on such a basic issue – unless deception was the goal.

In April 2008 Petraeus returned to give Congress another report on progress in Iraq. This time, without explanation or apology for his previously misleading presentation, Petraeus showed slides of Baghdad that were accurately color-coded. Substituting accurate for inaccurate slides was a tacit admission that his earlier presentation had been deceptive.

In his September 2007 testimony to Congress, Petraeus was also accused of relying on selective statistics for sectarian violence, with the purpose of exaggerating the progress achieved under his command.

There appears to be a pattern of falsification by General Petraeus.

crossposted at unbossed.com

Say goodnight to President Petraeus

Today Gen. David Petraeus was being questioned by the Senate Armed Services Committee about the quagmire in Afghanistan. As John McCain bemoaned that the US was planning not to extend indefinitely the surge Petraeus had wanted (on which see yesterday’s PR blitz by the Pentagon about vast Afghan mineral wealth), the general suddenly gawped and fainted. The hearing was suspended for a day to allow Petraeus to recover. He claimed afterwards that he was simply dehydrated…as if there were no beakers of water around.

With this public relations catastrophe, it’s now much less likely that Petraeus will be able to convert his apparent presidential ambitions into reality. For one thing, it raises further concerns about Petraeus’ physical fitness. Anyhow it’s simply not presidential to faint when you’re being asked difficult questions about your job performance, especially for a general. And, yes, Petraeus is painfully aware that his failure to stem the tide in Afghanistan is going to be a huge obstacle in his further ambitions.

I’ve never bought the hype about Petraeus’ supposed military genius and capabilities.

General Petraeus had built up the local police by recruiting officers who had previously worked for Saddam Hussein's security apparatus.

Although Mosul remained quiet for some months after, the US suffered one of its worse setbacks of the war in November 2004 when insurgents captured most of the city. The 7,000 police recruited by General Petraeus either changed sides or went home. Thirty police stations were captured, 11,000 assault rifles were lost and $41m (£20m) worth of military equipment disappeared. Iraqi army units abandoned their bases.

The general's next job was to oversee the training of a new Iraqi army. As head of the Multinational Security Transition Command, General Petraeus claimed that his efforts were proving successful. In an article in The Washington Post in September 2004, he wrote: "Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being re-established." This optimism turned out be misleading; three years later the Iraqi army is notoriously ineffective and corrupt.

General Petraeus was in charge of the Security Transition Command at the time that the Iraqi procurement budget of $1.2bn was stolen. "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Iraq's Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, said. "Huge amounts of money disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."

In any case Gen. Petraeus’ regular interference in domestic politics, such as his infamous op-ed published late in the 2004 presidential campaign, and even more his intrusion into the political debates regarding proposed surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been dangerous for our democracy. The Founders of our Republic were rightly worried that military officers’ ambitions would destabilize the nation. Petraeus has not only pushed his ambitions to an extreme not seen perhaps since Douglas MacArthur, he has even gone so far as to provide misleading testimony to Congress to further those ambitions. In his September 2007 testimony on the surge in Iraq, Petraeus used falsified maps that seemed designed specifically to obscure the extent of ethno-sectarian cleansing that had gone on in Bagdad while he was in command. Petraeus has never alerted Congress to that falsification much less publicly corrected his testimony.

I don’t trust the man, and I’ll be happy to see any presidential ambitions go quietly into the night.

crossposted at unbossed.com

Woodward discovers that the "surge" is overhyped

In the Washington Post today Bob Woodward reports that the reduction in violence in Iraq during the past year isn't entirely due to the increase in troops, as the Bush administration and its apologists would have it. Who would figured that out were it not for Woodward's ballyhooed access to the White House? I mean, apart from all the bloggers who've been saying this for the past year.

Woodward finally gets around to telling us the obvious because he's flogging a new book. He tries his best to dress this up as news, emphasizing three factors that helped to decrease violence in Iraq in 2007. They are in order:

(i) Assassination of anti-American terrorists and milita leaders based on new intelligence "sources, methods and operations".
(ii) The Anbar "Awakening" and "Concerned Local Citizens" groups.
(iii) Moqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire.

None of this is news, although Woodward tries hard in his book to portray the first as if it were a revelation. He also makes a big mystery of the details of how the military suddenly became more successful in identifying and locating those who were leading attacks on US forces. Woodward claims he's being vague in order to preserve military secrecy. It's all just a sham, however, and a piece with the fact that the item is listed first rather than, say, second. The sources for all this new actionable information are obvious – the former Sunni insurgents who turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq and decided to allow themselves to be bribed by the US to switch sides. Of course they were going to work with the US to settle scores against the anti-American Al Qaeda and Shia militia leaders. That was one of the points of bribing them.

So Woodward's first point is just a corollary of his second.

Meanwhile Woodward neglects to mention one of the most salient facts, a point that none of his sources in the White House or in the military command can have wanted to emphasize. The sectarian/ethnic cleansing of Baghdad (in particular) continued unabated during the first half year of the "surge", in some cases right under the noses of the stepped up American patrols. By August 2007, Sunnis had been driven out of most of the areas of Baghdad that they formally inhabited. Since that was what most of the violence was about, inevitably it subsided once the Sunnis retreated to a few enclaves to the east of the river (where most of the remaining violence is now located).

The White House and military are painfully aware of this. One of the key goals of the "surge", as Bush explained, was to put more troops in Baghdad to stop the ethnic/sectarian cleansing. It failed miserably. Thus the WH and Gen. Petraeus have had almost nothing to say on the topic of cleansing since the surge began.

In fact, as I've reported, in his first report to Congress in September 2007, Petraeus used grossly misleading slides that were designed to cover up the fact that Baghdad neighborhoods had been cleansed horrifically. And the following April, without acknowledging that he'd misled Congress the previous summer, Petraeus quietly replaced those earlier, falsified slides with accurate ones. In other words, Petraeus is highly sensitive to the significance of the sectarian/ethnic cleansing.

Bob Woodward, by contrast, neglects even to mention it. As so often, he appears to be captive to those inside sources he prizes so highly.

crossposted at unbossed.com

US military is outsourcing pell mell in Iraq

In today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus calls attention to a very interesting document. It suggests that the rosy scenario of "progress" in Iraq, as painted last week by George Bush and his favorite general, David Petraeus, might actually have been a tad overdrawn. I wonder as well whether this document is related to another odd thing I was puzzling over last week—the outsourcing of the oversight conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Pincus reports:

...10 days ago, [Petraeus'] commanders in Baghdad began advertising for private contractors to work in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq because half the soldiers who had been working in the warehouses were needed for patrols, combat and protection of U.S. forces.

"With the increased insurgent activity, unit supply personnel must continue to pull force protection along with convoy escort and patrol duties," according to a statement of work that accompanied the Sept. 7 request for bidders from Multi-National Force-Iraq.

All of the small logistics bases, called Supply Support Activities, or SSAs, are "currently using about 50% of their assigned (currently less than 100% strength) military personnel for other required duties (force protection, patrols, escort duties, etc. along with performing 24 hour combat operations)," the statement says.

As Pincus suggests, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the military is so desperate to hold the line in Iraq that it needs to put out on the streets nearly every soldier and marine who can fire a rifle. Support roles are being filled increasingly with civilian contractors. That's a longstanding trend, of course. But this memo implies that the current ad hoc measures weren't anticipated and had to be implemented suddenly. Besides, stripping the warehouses of trained personnel has a whiff of desperation about it.

The proposal, which is for six months and has a six-month extension option, calls for some personnel to be familiar and experienced with "hazardous/radioactive material handling." At the same time, it states, "Contractor personnel are not required to have a security clearance to perform duties in the SSA." A comment on the Web site version of the proposal adds, "Ensure this is correct."

Three things really stand out. First, the Army began advertising the contract even before it had ascertained truly basic information about the requirements. Second, putting contractors without any sort of security clearances in charge of critical nodes in the system of military resupply is frankly pretty shockingly lax...even for the Bush government. And third, the Army doesn't have any clear idea how long this situation will continue, but suspects that it will be extended beyond 6 months and may have to be expanded to encompass 100% of the warehousing activities.

Although the initial request is for 101 individuals qualified in warehouse operations, "additional manning may be required and the contractor should anticipate possible increases," according to the proposal. Some locations may end up being "completely manned by contract personnel," the statement says.

I smell a hint of desperation in this contract. So much for the rose-lined garden path General Petraeus asked us to try very, very hard to believe in.

I wonder if this could be related to another extremely curious instance of outsourcing that came to light last week? The Army has decided to outsource much of the work of investigating the reconstruction of Iraq, which until now has been done by personnel working under the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).

The Army Contracting Agency announced the other day that it is asking for private companies -- small businesses only -- "to procure all personnel, equipment, tools, materials, supervision, and other items and non-personal services necessary to perform data collection, analysis, design, formation and other project management support to ensure publication of the quarterly report."

The Bush administration has tried and failed to close down SIGIR in the past. It could be that the outsourcing of SIGIR's work is a round-about way to undermine the Special IG. But it might also be the case that SIGIR personnel working in Iraq were desperately needed for other work. It's not just the military, but also State Dept. and other civilian agencies in Iraq, that cannot fill critical positions.

Just a theory. In any event, we're seeing some rather peculiar hand-to-mouth solutions for some dimly understood and unexplained problems in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the summer doldrums in the Iraq war are nearly over. Insurgents have just declared a new Ramadan offensive. Don't hold your breath waiting for Petraeus to amend his congressional testimony.

crossposted from unbossed.com

"Remove one zero": Manipulating body counts in Iraq

Together with the Maliki government, General Petraeus is campaigning aggressively to convince reporters and the public that his claims of diminished sectarian violence are based on sound statistics. The GAO, the Associated Press, McClatchy and others have found that the Pentagon is undercounting and underreporting deaths and violence generally. The credibility of Bush and Petraeus, and their prescription of more-of-the-same, won't stand up if their statistics are revealed as nothing but a load of hooey.

At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Petraeus was greeted as a conquering hero. Never the less he remained sufficiently defensive as to wave around some papers that, he claimed, showed he was being straight regarding his highly dubious statistics. He called it "setting the record straight":

As only the military can, we have a three-page document on ethnosectarian violence methodology. And it is fairly comprehensive. And it's pretty logical and rational.

Today's LA Times has more regarding the record-straight-setting operation from the Pentagon:

U.S. military officials sought Wednesday to counter accusations that they were manipulating death tolls to make Iraq look more secure.

Stung by accusations that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, had presented selective statistics during his testimony before Congress, the military released a statement here outlining its definition of sectarian violence: bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes...

The Iraqi government also compiles statistics, but does not differentiate between sectarian and other violent deaths.

And there's the rub. Petraeus is far from eager to acknowledge that the Pentagon is dependent for its statistics upon those compiled by Iraqi civil authorities—which often are inaccurate, unmethodical, falsified, and incomplete, and always dispersed rather than centralized. The figures given for murders, bombings, and other acts of violence are a minimum count rather than an accurate representation of what is happening. The central Iraqi government, naturally, has an interest in cooperating in the pretense that the situation is really not so grim as news reports suggest:

In Baghdad on Wednesday, the national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, agreed with the U.S. military that numbers coming from the media and other outlets were "very, very, very exaggerated."

Asked what the true death toll was, Rubaie said, "I don't have a figure, but I can say one thing: You probably would be correct if you removed one zero from the figures which are in the public domain or published by the newspapers."

But bashing reporters who dig out the truth won't get you very far. Iraqis know perfectly well that the Maliki and Bush governments are minimizing the body count deliberately:

Noureddine Hayali, a member of the main Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, said he suspected officials were not reporting sectarian deaths in other cities.

He also questioned whether the U.S. military figures included such incidents as killings last March in the northern city of Tall Afar...

"It is not in the interest of the government to show all these numbers. They want to show that they have made progress by decreasing death numbers," Hayali said.

Even Iraqi officials, when pressed, admit that their own figures are incredible:

Rubaie acknowledged that the government needed to devise a method to account for its dead citizens.

"I admit that we, as the Iraqi government, have a responsibility to go back to our records and do this properly and openly and help produce a figure which is credible," he said.

It's simply preposterous, then, for Petraeus and Bush to pretend that these Iraqi statistics are reliable.

Retired Army Col. Douglas A. Macgregor, a defense analyst ... said several factors made body counts unreliable in Iraq. Among them are the Muslim practice of burying bodies as soon as possible, the general chaos of war, and sectarian agendas within Maliki's government.

"You're talking about an environment where there is absolutely no accountability for anything," Macgregor said. "The bottom line is, whatever figures you are given are simply inaccurate."

Don't think so? Here are pertinent comments by the Independent's Patrick Cockburn in what is, to my mind, one of the classic dissections of Bush's "surge".

More lies have been told about casualties in Iraq and the general level of violence there than at almost any time since the First World War. In that conflict, a British minister remarked sourly that he suspected the military authorities of keeping three sets of casualty figures: "One to deceive the Cabinet, a second to deceive the people and a third to achieve themselves."

The American attitude to Iraqi civilian casualties is along much the same lines. The Baker-Hamilton report drawn up by senior non-partisan Democrats and Republicans last year examined one day in July 2006, when the US military had reported 93 attacks on US and Iraqi forces. Investigation by US intelligence agencies revealed that the real figure was about 1,100.

The Iraqi government has sought to conceal civilian casualty figures by banning journalists from the scenes of bombings, and banned hospitals and the Health Ministry from giving information. In July, AP reported, 2,024 Iraqis died violently, a 23 per cent rise on June, which was the last month for which the government gave a figure.

This is almost certainly an underestimate. In a single bombing in the district of Karada in Baghdad on 26 July, Iraqi television and Western media cited the police as saying that there were 25 dead and 100 wounded. A week later, a list of the names of 92 dead and 127 wounded, compiled by municipal workers, was pinned up on shuttered shopfronts in the area.

That is a measure of how much lying is going on. For General Petraeus and George W. Bush to pretend to the American public that their statistics are credible is a mark of extreme arrogance.

crossposted from unbossed.com

Bush & Co. not even trying to make sense

Today some Bush administration mouthpieces floated so far free of logic, reason, and fact that they must now count as extraterrestrial objects.

For example, this idiocy:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said a status report going to Congress on Friday would not show "dramatic differences" from a similar one in July. That review found satisfactory progress on just eight benchmarks.

"It has only been 58 days since the last assessment," she said.

How does that square with Petraeus' testimony to Congress that "progress" has been especially significant during the last few months ("the overall number of security incidents in Iraq has declined in 8 of the past 12 weeks, with the numbers of incidents in the last two weeks at the lowest levels seen since June 2006.")? Indeed, when pressed by Senator Biden to explain why his own rosy scenario differed radically from other recent pessimistic reports, such as the GAO report on Iraq, Petraeus replied that the other reports did not incorporate the remarkable results of the last five weeks.

The appeal to the last 5 weeks made no sense, of course, even on its own terms. We've been told over and over again that the occupation of Iraq is a very long term project and "progress" has to be measured in small increments over years. Along comes Petraeus claiming that "progress" revolves around events of just five weeks' time.

In any case, Perino's statement today shows the contempt that the White House holds for any who took Petraeus' words seriously.

*
* *

Then there was all the nonsense about the circumstances and meaning of the murder of sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha.

The White House said Abu Risha's death was an "unfortunate and outrageous act" and that it believed al-Qaida was responsible.

The White House had no actual details, but General Petraeus wasn't waiting around for pesky facts.

General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, issued a statement calling the sheikh's death a tragedy. "It's a terrible loss for Anbar province and all of Iraq. It shows how significant his importance was and it shows al-Qaida in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy. He was an organising force that did help organise alliances and did help keep the various tribes together."

The CSMonitor adds:

Petraeus first met Abu Risha during an encounter outside a US military headquarters building in Ramadi in March.

"I have enormous respect for what you and your tribe have started," Petraeus told the sheikh during the meeting, captured by a videographer.

This is the General whose judgment we are supposed to accept as the first and last word of wisdom on Iraq?

To begin with, nobody has produced any clear evidence to show which group killed Abu Risha. Even the WH, not known for its subtlety, hasn't gone as far as Petraeus—who immediately rushed to the conclusion that al Qaeda was responsible.

Makes you wonder how Petraeus attained the reputation, at least among the DC elite, for being level-headed and brilliant?

As the Monitor points out, Abu Risha had tense relations with other powerful sheiks even within the (mainly tribal) "Anbar Awakening" group. He was also loathed by many other Sunni groups in Anbar Province, including a rival tribal coalition and especially the anti-occupation insurgents, particularly after he appeared with George Bush ten days ago.

Among Abu Risha's chief rivals in Anbar was Ali Hatem al-Suleiman, another leader in the Duleimi tribe.

"Clans that cooperated with the British nearly a century ago still live in shame," al-Suleiman told the AP by telephone Wednesday, referring to Britain's period of colonial rule in Iraq. "Only a mercenary would meet with Bush, who had no business coming to Anbar anyway."

And then there were all those who detested Abu Risha because he was a crook and a thug, a leader of highway robbers, who had among other things stolen millions of dollars donated by the US.

Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists — complain they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being branded as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad, government delight at the Anbar Front's impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern that the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will turn the province into his personal fiefdom.

It takes a particular kind of fool to rush immediately to the conclusion, in the absence of evidence, that al Qaeda was behind Abu Risha's murder. But then Petraeus and the administration cannot bring themselves to admit, even now, that they were playing a dangerous game showering money, power, and influence on a petty crook.

crossposted from unbossed.com

President Petraeus

Have you had the sense deep inside your thumos, right in the very core of your truthiness, that saint General Petraeus' behavior as a Bush administration shill is just a little bit, well, odd? Composing a flagrantly political op-ed for the Washington Post in the dying days of the 2004 campaign? Pressing hard for a "surge" that he'd been highly skeptical of? Ignoring a mental health survey on the effects of prolonged deployments in Iraq, until it was made public half a year later, and then expressing shock, shock at its findings. Lying flat out to Congress about the extent of continued violence in Iraq—and meanwhile suppressing the statistics? Failing even to submit a written report? Calling his behavior "odd" is putting the matter charitably.

The resourceful Patrick Cockburn may have identified the explanation that makes sense of it all finally: Petraeus has his eyes set on the White House.

From tomorrow's Independent:

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.

"I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.

General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.

If the "surge" is abandoned now as a failure, however, Petraeus' putative political career will go nowhere.

This information comes from a single source, it's worth emphasizing, and one who expresses skepticism about the success of the "surge". But Cockburn is a canny reporter, and I trust that he has confirmed that Khadim did indeed work closely with Gen. Petraeus during the period in question.

It's also worth mentioning this new article by the equally formidable Gareth Porter, who depicts intense hostility between Petraeus and his Commanding Officer, Admiral William Fallon. If Porter's sources are right, Fallon thinks Petraeus is far more interested in making powerful connections and advancing his own career than in doing what is necessary and right by the military.

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior...

The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.

Those who are familiar with the US Navy will recognize that "chickenshit" is a technical term of abuse that has highly specific applicability.

crossposted from unbossed

Iraq is for Lovers

The civil war in Iraq has become sexy again and the love-struck are everywhere today.

At the National Press "Club" luncheon, saint General Petraeus announced right away that he'd dispense entirely with the Tiresome Litany of evidence, argument, and analysis. Instead, he performed a few Card Tricks and then took questions.

The Journalists in attendance, taking turns at plumping his pillows, hung upon his every Word. A few brave but trembling souls ventured to ask the Great Man some questions, with gushing avowal that Petraeus is the Bestest General Ever.

General, I congratulate you on your very, very successful accomplishment of the very difficult mission in Iraq.

Pesky Questions about the Saint's honesty and candor were banished on the breeze.

General, welcome home. I found your testimony to be most clear, concise and honest. And I thank you for that.

Gales of laughter greeted his every witticism, as if the Journalists were in the presence of Mark Twain himself. The blushing Young Things even tittered at Petraeus' Punctuation Marks.

But with that, I'd be happy to hand off to Ambassador Crocker.
(LAUGHTER)

It was a regular Love-In.

General, thank you very much for doing a wonderful and a magnificent job for the nation.

Petraeus' glamorous testimony in Congress ("his boyish straight talk", as one Serious Journalist opined) was so very manly that even the Bookish Types in the capital city were All Atwitter.

"I thought [Petraeus'] demeanor, along with his chest of medals, really bought all the time that George W. Bush needs right now," said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.

In fact they were jostling each other over at Brookings for the pole Position next to his heart.

I was struck when I was in Iraq in July by how much information was whispered in my ear...I think the attacks on him have been unfounded

And who better to pass judgment in such a Sensitive Matter than Sen. Larry Craig, who today sprang forward to defend the honor of this truly Virtuous General?

"Unfortunately, many were quick to prejudge the surge..."

Love is back in the air, and we can thank Iraq for that.

crossposted from unbossed

What was the goal of the "surge", anyhow?

George Bush assured Americans more than half a year ago that his proposed "surge" had twin goals. The diplomatic goal was to give Nouri al Maliki's government "breathing space" during which to advance the cause of sectarian reconciliation. Nearly everybody, including Bush's ambassador in Iraq, agrees that nothing significant has been achieved toward that goal.

And the military goal of the "surge"?

Here was George W. Bush addressing the nation on January 10, 2007:

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis...

America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

The military goal, simply, was to put a stop to the sectarian violence that was tearing neighborhoods apart, to secure them with the help of Iraqi troops, and to protect the population. So how has that part of the "surge" gone?

The mass expulsion of Sunnis from Baghdad has nearly been completed this year, right under General Petraeus' nose.

U.S. military officials say that Baghdad was once 65 percent Sunni and is now 75 percent Shiite.

Not only has the Sunni population not been protected during this period, but Iraqi government forces actively took part in the sectarian cleansing of the few remaining Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad.

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...

Shiites present their creeping takeover of Baghdad as part of a narrative of liberation—American officers have dubbed it Shiite "Manifest Destiny."...

Officially, the Iraqi government is asking residents to return to their old neighborhoods as the massive troop presence enforces a degree of calm; those who do are offered a million-dinar reward (approximately $800). But, says the U.S. official familiar with refugee issues, "Sunnis are reluctant to go back to areas when it's only Iraqi security forces there managing their safety. In a lot of cases security forces participated in their displacement." A humanitarian worker focused on IDPs and a U.S. military official both say that often families only return to their houses long enough to grab a suitcase and pocket the reward money before leaving again.

In brief: The stated diplomatic goal was a failure; the stated military goal was a failure.

What does the Bush administration call for? More of the same—exactly what it was calling for last January.

crossposted from unbossed

Progress in Iraq, again

By now you'll have heard that Gen. David Petraeus, in typically disingenuous testimony to Congress, announced immediately that under his leadership the military objectives of the "surge" are being met and coalition forces "have achieved progress in the security arena". He then bolstered this nonsense with a series of outlandish lies.

It's worth reprising a point I made in June in a post that, I regret, did not attract much attention: "Progress in Iraq". In it I showed that the phrase "progress in Iraq" has been a constant rhetorical trope going all the way back to the very beginning of the Bush administration's excuse-mongering about the disastrous occupation. Bush & Co. did not turn to fictional "progress" after other excuses had failed to convince. "Progress" has been their constant companion, as they have tried to explain away or deny all the unpleasant facts that are in front of our eyes.

From the outset "progress" was most definitely an excuse, nothing more. For over two months after declaring victory in Iraq, as I showed, Bush avoided acknowledging in public the burgeoning Iraqi insurgency. In late June 2003 he finally was forced to discuss it—in a radio address that emphasized the "progress in Iraq" being made. It immediately became Bush & Co.'s favorite catch-phrase for the (failure of the) occupation. And it remains ever thus.

So Gen. Petraeus ignores the nearly two dozen American casualties today and instead invokes "progress". Gen. Petraeus ignores the vast majority of Iraqis who believe that security has worsened under the "surge", and instead invokes "progress". Gen. Petraeus ignores the crumbling of the Iraqi government, and instead invokes "progress".

For some measure of the rank dishonesty of this shameless mouthpiece for the administration, consider that Gen. Petraeus has the audacity to claim in his opening remarks today that the murders of civilians are down, that the ethno-sectarian violence is down, that the number of "security incidents" (?) is at its lowest level since June of 2006.

The facts don't concur.

If there has been a drop in certain kinds of violence during the last few weeks, that is only because of the stifling heat which each summer tends to depress, briefly, the level of violence. The attacks and deaths each month this summer are at the highest levels ever experienced in Iraq during those months. An very basic point. But you will look in vain in Petraeus' testimony for any mention of it.

You also will not find him discussing another basic point that I've made over and over again: The ethnic/sectarian cleansing of Baghdad has picked up pace and advanced so far, under Petraeus' nose during this "surge", that Sunnis have been driven out of large parts of the city. No wonder, then, with some 35,000 fleeing the city in the last few months alone, that sectarian murders and bombings in Baghdad have stabilized.

You may recall that in January, inserting himself once again into partisan politics, Gen. Petraeus stated that the Democrats' proposal for withdrawal from Iraq would bring disaster:

Petraeus warned of incalculable dangers of any rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, as favored by many congressional Democrats, saying it would lead to intensified terrorist inroads, "ethnic cleansing" and a bloodbath in Baghdad.

Decidedly ironic, then, that his own command in Iraq has witnessed (many Iraqis would say abetted) the decisive stages of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad.

Little wonder that Americans distrust Petraeus nearly as much as Iraqis.

Update: Here are two clear examples of Gen. Petraeus caught in outright lies today.

First, examine the third of the slides he presented to Congress (on page 4 of this PDF). It presents four maps of "ethno-sectarian violence" in the neighborhoods of Baghdad since December 2006. These maps pretend that the ethnic/sectarian mix of various neighborhoods has remained constant during this period. In fact, as I've commented here and elsewhere, the Sunnis have been driven headlong out of many neighborhoods since December 2006. Despite the map, there are no longer either majority Sunni or mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods east of the Tigris. And west of the Tigris, Sunni-dominated areas have shrunk considerably.

The maps falsify one of the most delicate of issues: The failure of the "surge" to stem ethnic/sectarian cleansing of Baghdad. If that information were brought to the fore, it would call into question the claims by Petraeus and other spokespeople for the Bush administration that the "surge" is responsible for an alleged drop in violence in Baghdad. If there is any such drop, it may be due in large part to the success of Shia attempts to drive Sunnis from their homes and into exile.

Secondly, Think Progress had the goods on another of Petraeus' lies. The General told Congress today that before the "surge" nobody could have predicted its success in transforming Anbar Province.

...our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous. The events of the past six months underscore that point. When I testified in January, for example, no one would have dared to forecast that Anbar Province would have been transformed the way it has in the past 6 months.

The trouble is that when Petraeus testified to the Senate in January, he stated that the transformation in Anbar was already underway:

You’ve seen it, I know, in Anbar province, where it has sort of gone back and forth. And right now there appears to be a trend in the positive direction where sheikhs are stepping up and they do want to be affiliated with and supported by the U.S. Marines and Army forces who are in Anbar province. That was not the case as little as perhaps six months ago, or certainly before that.

So in January, Petraeus used the evidence of the shift in Sunni alliances to call for Congress to support a "surge". In September, Petraeus uses that evidence to claim success for the "surge".

"Shameless" may have been too kind.

crossposted from unbossed

What Petraeus report?

You thought the Bush & Co. legerdemain had run its course when it was revealed last month that the White House rather than (saint) General Petraeus would write the much-anticipated report on Iraq to be given to Congress—though based, we were told, upon Petraeus' report to Bush. But you underestimated their duplicity once again, didn't you? Today we're told that Petraeus won't produce an actual report at all.

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. "There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony," the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus' opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

Thereby the whole process of lying about "progress in Iraq" will be much facilitated.