Center For American Progress: Petraeus's Song And Dance
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
SEPTEMBER 10, 2007
11:18 AM
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CONTACT: Center For American Progress
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Petraeus's Song And Dance
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WASHINGTON - September 10 - Today, Gen. David Petraeus begins his much-anticipated report to
Congress on progress in Iraq. His appearance marks the most
high-profile appearance of a war general on Capitol Hill since Gen.
William Westmoreland testified on April 28th, 1967, that America was
making progress in Vietnam. Petraeus is expected to make a similar
argument about the Bush administration's efforts in Iraq, rebuffing
calls for a redeployment
of U.S. troops and arguing that the troop buildup should be kept in
place until at least spring
2008. Yet already there is reason to be skeptical of the "facts" he
will use to back-up his claims of success, with reports that the
administration has watered down reports, taken undeserved credit for
progress on the ground, and fudged statistics. Approximately 66
percent of the American public believe President Bush will stick
with his policy no matter what Petraeus reports, and 53 percent say
Petraeus will try to make things in Iraq look better than they are.
Sixty-five to 70 percent of Iraqis say escalation has "worsened
rather than improved security, political stability and the pace of
redevelopment alike."
MYTH #1 -- SECTARIAN DEATHS IN BAGHDAD
HAVE DROPPED 75 PERCENT SINCE 2006: In late August, Petraeus
told The Australian that "there had been a 75
per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last
year." He is expected to make a similar claim today. Yet reports
indicate that the
Pentagon may be undercounting sectarian deaths. Intelligence analysts
who computed "aggregate
levels of violence against civilians" for the recent National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "puzzled over how the military designated
attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal." "If a bullet went through
the back of the head, it's sectarian," said one senior intelligence
official. "If it went through the front, it's criminal." The Pentagon's
sectarian violence numbers also exclude Sunni on Sunni violence, Shiite on Shiite violence, and car bombs. In
an April interview, Bush attempted to explain his subjective rationale
for excluding car bombs: "If the standard
of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just
handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory." The number of
car bombings have actually increased five
percent since December. Additionally, the NIE found that conflict
levels in Baghdad "have
diminished to some extent" because of widespread
ethnic cleansing.
MYTH #2 -- SECTARIAN DEATHS REACHED
MORE THAN 1,600 IN DEC. 2006: Not only is the Pentagon
underreporting recent sectarian deaths, it also raising the number of
past incidents in order to make the "reduction" seem more impressive.
In
March, the Pentagon's quarterly report estimated that in Dec. 2006 --
right before the President announced his escalation -- "there were
about 1,300
sectarian slayings across Iraq." But in its June report, "the
Pentagon revised the December 2006 death toll to more than 1,600. That
change makes the decline to about 600 in April -- after the surge began
-- even more dramatic." Much of the Pentagon's data and methodology is
classified. Last week, Goverment Accountability Office comptroller
David Walker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there are
"several
different sources within the administration" who "do not agree" on
levels of violence. He added that he "could
not get comfortable" with the way the Pentagon calculated such a
steep drop in sectarian violence.
MYTH #3 -- SECTARIAN DEATHS ARE
DECLINING ACROSS THE COUNTRY: Despite the government's claim
that Baghdad casualties are dramatically dropping, war-related deaths
throughout Iraq have doubled compared with last year, rising to "an average daily toll of
33 in 2006, and 62 so far this year." "Bombings, sectarian slayings
and other violence related to the war killed
at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row
that civilian deaths have risen." Additionally, the recent NIE found
that over the next six to 12 months, "levels of
insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high."
MYTH #4 -- BUSH'S ESCALATION IS
RESPONSIBLE FOR PROGRESS IN ANBAR: One of the success stories
Petraeus will likely highlight is the reduced violence in the Anbar
province, which was once the "heartland"
of the Sunni insurgency. Last week, Bush made a surprise
visit to the region and used it to argue that the troop buildup
should not be cut short. "In Anbar you're seeing firsthand the
dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure,"
said Bush. But the administration's policies had little to do with
Anbar's progress. As the Washington Post noted yesterday, "The sheik
who forged the alliance with the Americans, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh
al-Rishawi, traced the decision to fight al-Qaeda to Sept. 14, 2006,
long before the new Bush strategy, but the president's plan dispatched
another 4,000 U.S. troops to Anbar to exploit the situation. As
security improved, the
White House eagerly took credit." Last week, CNN correspondent
Michael Ware also noted that the Sunni
insurgency in Anbar offered to work with U.S. troops -- not the
Iraqi government -- to fight al Qaeda in 2003, but the United States
rejected the offer. Only "after four years
of bloodshed" was the United States "finally ready to accept those
terms."
MYTH #5 -- AL QAEDA IN IRAQ IS 'PUBLIC
ENEMY NUMBER ONE': In July, Bush referred to al Qaeda 95
times in a single speech, claiming the war in Iraq has become the central
front in the fight against al Qaeda (AQ-I). Echoing Bush, Petraeus
recently argued that al Qaeda is "public
enemy number one" in Iraq, and will likely make a similar claim to
Congress this week. But in a new report,
the Congressional Research Service (CRS) notes that attacks from al
Qaeda are
only a small percentage of the violence in Iraq, criticizing the Bush
administration's statistics and noting that this false reporting on
AQ-I
has increased since Bush's "surge" began. "Increasingly in 2007, U.S.
commanders have seemed to equate AQ-I with the insurgency, even though
most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents,"
concluded CRS.
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