Scoring the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond

[babylonsister]

Scoring the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
by Col. Daniel Smith | March 11, 2008

snip//

First, is the increased "support" for remaining in Iraq that the poll detected ephemeral or a reflection of a longer-term change in attitude among the population of the United States? Is the public, once again, letting the administration get away with spinning the news?

In announcing the troop increase thirteen months ago, President Bush told the public that the added numbers of U.S. soldiers would give the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "political space" in which to debate and enact laws

* amending earlier statutes that would deny employment in the post-Saddam Iraq to any Iraqi who had been a member of the Ba'athist Party;

* creating new arrangements to develop Iraq's oil fields and for distributing revenues from sales of oil, and

* finalizing arrangements for the election of provincial government officials.

So what is the box score?

The "re-employment" law as passed throws more people out of work than it takes in, particularly in the security services where an estimated 20,000 could lose their positions, their income, and all inhibitions to oppose the current government and the coalition forces.

The Iraqi parliament could not resolve disagreements on which level of government, Baghdad or the provinces, controls oil and gas resources and who has the power to conclude contracts for developing the oil fields. Similarly, efforts to legislate the informal arrangements pertaining to the distribution of oil revenues foundered on objections of the Kurdish faction and their demands for the referendum on the future of Kirkukt.

As for the provincial election law, this was passed by the Iraqi parliament but was then vetoed by the presidency council.

That's zero for three, which in baseball is an out.

What about the reduction in fatalities reported among U.S. and coalition forces, the Iraqi military, other Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi civilians in the last five months of 2007 and, for the foreign forces, in the first two months of 2008?

The decreases were real, but not for the reason asserted by the White House: i.e., "the surge worked!" Contrary to the administration's spin, there was no straight-forward cause-effect relationship in play. The decreases were due to at least three factors unrelated to the "surge:"

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/13357