Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost

Analysis: US now winning Iraq war

news.yahoo.com

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.



Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war — four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 26-7-2008 by bakednutz]

Im not sure that I would agree with this. Just because violence is down does not mean we are winning. We have had major casualties of US soldiers, coalition forces, and especially innocent Iraqi civilians. Im not sure if the MSM thinks they can put BS like this out and people will suddenly believe we are winning and support the war. It has, still is, and always will have been a mistake to invade Iraq.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Are you sure it wasn't the media who first got it wrong?First the media reports they are placing bombers in Cuba,then Russia states they never said that.Then the report with Venezuela's Chavez asking Russian to protect the country from the US,then they reject saying that.Sorry i don't believe me the Media anymore.LOL just my 2 cents.BTW you cant win a war over there fighting poor citizens who don't want us there.

What in the hell does it mean "winning?"

We have NO goals. We don't know what our mission is.

How can you be "winning" a war, if you don't now what it means for victory in said war?

Originally posted by Double Eights
What in the hell does it mean "winning?"

We have NO goals. We don't know what our mission is.

How can you be "winning" a war, if you don't now what it means for victory in said war?

Im not sure their definiton of winning. The mission is probably something like, "Kill the terrorists!".

Are we winning this war?????

Originally posted by Double Eights
What in the hell does it mean "winning?"

...Bringing violence down and making the Iraqi government independent enough to allow for the departure of most U.S. troops without catastrophe and genocide (like in Vietnam)?

In boxing you can win by a TKO or by points. The Viet Nam conflict was seen as being lost when the last helicopter left the embassy. Iraq is currently being seen as "winning" on points, violence is down, the govt is making progress.

As the article says, it's the "beginning of a perilous peace".

I think the following helped to see some ray of hope

the Sunni insurgency...are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

Although Sunni and Shiite extremists are still around, they have surrendered the initiative and have lost the support of many ordinary Iraqis. That can be traced to an altered U.S. approach to countering the insurgency — a Petraeus-driven move to take more U.S. troops off their big bases and put them in Baghdad neighborhoods where they mixed with ordinary Iraqis and built a new level of trust.

my italics

We "broke" Iraq and thus ended up having to clean up the mess of our own making. So much went terribly wrong, so much incompetence, on our part. The Iraq's deserved so much better.

What will now become political fodder will be the misunderstood "surge", as it relates to this "good news". The "surge" was never meant to be a battle formation. It was, rather, a change from battle plans to Petraeus's plan for fighting an insurgency. This is only one component of this success. The "surge" in money for Sunnis and cement for walls accounts for much of it, too. All part of a three-legged stool.

To those who proposed the invasion, a sovereign nation that controls its own oil resources could be a loss. "Winning" aside, the elective invasion changed two countries, both Iraq and America, in major ways.

Originally posted by Johnmike

Originally posted by Double Eights
What in the hell does it mean "winning?"

...Bringing violence down and making the Iraqi government independent enough to allow for the departure of most U.S. troops without catastrophe and genocide (like in Vietnam)?

So what happens when we leave (you know, in a hundred years) and the entire country goes to #? Do we still credit for the W, considering we weren't losing while we were there? Or do we still get the L, since it was our war in the first place?

Or is it like Baseball, after so many inings the original pitcher (in this case, occupier) gets a no decision?

The war in Iraq is being won, but not just by our troops. It is also the Iraqis themselves that brought success to the surge that John McCain is claiming credit for. It was what they call the Anbar Awakening where Sunnis started to cooperate with the US and turned on Al Qaeda and said "never again".

Crocker, a veteran Mideast envoy who plans to wind up a nearly two-year tour here in January, would not rule out that Iraq could again descend into sectarian warfare in a contest for power and resources. But he expressed optimism that ordinary Iraqis, enjoying a new calm on their streets, will not allow it.

"You talk to people (Iraqis), and they just say, `Never again. We almost destroyed ourselves,' " he said in an hour-long interview. "There is almost a kind of embarrassment over it: 'How could we Iraqis do that?' "

US envoy says Iraq insurgency has lost its clout

Bold emphasis added.

Let's hope that this lasts, and our troops can finally come home from Iraq. Meanwhile, the insurgents have left Iraq and are now focusing on Afghanistan. That is why the violence has increased there, and now we should deal with them and finish them off.

reply to post by Hal9000


Very good point! The Iraqi's deserve to say, "We're winning!"
God, I hope and pray for that country. And, yes, back to Afghanistan.

I was waiting for a news article claiming US victory.

Let me state that I believe it is of utmost importance to prevail in this was regardless of your stance prior to the Iraq war.

Last week, on the BBC, Robert Baer whom I listen too claimed the opposite.

Why?

Baer had said that Iran had won!?

If you follow Patrick Cockburn, one of the few to remain on the scene in Baghdad, he has given us a different message.

Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.

We are in the beginning of this thing,

Thats why McCain gave the hundred year scenario.

Iraq is still a firecracker.

Iran wants to light the fuse.

i would say we are winning when no more soldiers are dying in Iraq

Originally posted by whiteraven
Iraq is still a firecracker.

Iran wants to light the fuse.

This is true. How else would insurgents be allowed to travel around so freely in that part of the world.

I have no doubt that Iran is part of the problem, but looking at it from a different perspective and by no means condoning what they are doing, they are acting in their best interest.

I think that this will be used in the future for further aggression, but we are sticking our nose in other peoples business, any way you look at it. That is why who we select as our next commander in chief will determine what will happen next.

Choose wisely.

How can an invading force "win a civil war" between two religious factions"
That's absurd.

Don't forget people the media haven't been too forthcoming about the deaths of American servicemen in Iraq either:

www.birf.info...

A group of seven House Democrats wrote President Bush this week, accusing the Pentagon of underreporting casualties in Iraq.

The letter writers argue that Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that, the Democrats declare, adding that the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma.

But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.

There has been a consistently coordinated effort by mainstream media (you know who I'm talking about: Faux News and CONN) to make Iraq seem far more rosy than it actually is on the ground. And it's been going once since virtually the start of the war.

www.commondreams.org...

The finding bolsters allegations by Democratic lawmakers and other critics that the Bush administration has withheld or misconstrued intelligence that conflicted with its Iraq policy while promoting data and claims that supported its positions.

Those allegations date back to President Bush's contention before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion that Saddam Hussein was hiding illegal nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. His claim proved to be unfounded.

Take a look at the stupid standards they use to work out casualties and violence:

On page 94 of its report, the Iraq Study Group found that there had been "significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq." The reason, the group said, was because the tracking system was designed in a way that minimized the deaths of Iraqis.

"The standard for recording attacks acts a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report said. "A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count."

The ISG report said that U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence on one day in July. "Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light more than 1,100 acts of violence," it said.

It even extends to foreign media sources regarding the other Coalition armies, particularly the British: www.casualty-monitor.org...

I would take this with a grain of salt.

Violence has lulled for the time being... So what? Should we start popping the champagne and then watch another one of Iraq's deadliest terrorist attacks yet unfold?

Don't count all your eggs before their unhatched...

Those tensions and civil strife is simply simmering for now. Iraq is a powderkeg quite literally, you never know when it's going to go off.

We are YEARS, still years away from closing this sad, sorry chapter in the Bush Administration's history.

[edit on 27/7/08 by The Godfather of Conspira]

Will we every "win" the Iraq war? Well, if you mean winning the hearts and minds of the people, the answer is an absolute NO! If you mean an eventual decrease in terror, the answer is yes because eventually war, starvation, mass migration of refugees, disease, etc. will deplete the entire population and we will eventually be able to proudly (hah!) place our American flag in the soil and claim victory (at the cost of a bogus illegal war in which over 1 million total lives, billions of dollars in property, and the complete destruction of a once great and ancient civilization).

And of course the neocons will repeat endlessly; "I told you so!"
There is a big difference in "being right" and "doing right!"

We "won" the Iraq War back in 2003.

It's the occupation that's been the problem - we've managed to calm the civil violence (after five years and 4000 troops) for the time being, IMHO that means it's a great time to get the hell out of a country we should have never invaded in the first place.

The triumphalist BS coming from the right shouldn't surprise anyone at this point, that's their typical MO. Apparently it's perfectly OK with them that our invasion has given Iran a new regional ally.

That, by the way, is the reason they don't want to withdraw.

They know that by bringing democratic government to Iraq, we've essentially handed it to Iran.

The only reason the the Iraqi government even pretends to cooperate with the US is because we still have a huge military force in their country.

The current Iraqi leadership is far more aligned with Iran than it is with the US.

That's democracy for ya - people don't always choose what we want them to

[edit on 7/27/08 by xmotex]

I was never a supporter of the Iraq War, but these "anti-war" comments are becoming a little absurd.

Originally posted by Double Eights
So what happens when we leave (you know, in a hundred years) and the entire country goes to #?

I think it will be possible to leave within a couple years without Iraq falling apart. I mean, we're all speculating, and we have to see the general's reports as he analyzes the feasibility of withdrawing troops in the next six weeks or so. But if it's not, it's not, and then it's once again balancing between staying and running. But if it means running when we can achieve victory in the somewhat near future (at least for the Iraqi government we're setting up), then it's worth it.

Originally posted by whaaa
How can an invading force "win a civil war" between two religious factions"
That's absurd.

Kind of. We invaded it and did a regime change. At that point we're backing and fighting with one faction while fighting another. I think "civil war" implies a centralized, calculated rebellion (American Civil War), more so than what we have in Iraq. But hey, America would have had far more trouble trying to win the Revolutionary War without the French - and that took eight years, with a revolution started by its own people.

Originally posted by whatsup
Will we every "win" the Iraq war? Well, if you mean winning the hearts and minds of the people, the answer is an absolute NO!

Well, I think with time some people will appreciate some of the freedoms they were awarded by not having to live under a tyrannical dictator. But yeah, when your child is killed because of it, you don't care much, and you just want to blame anyone.

Originally posted by whatsup
at the cost of a bogus illegal war in which over 1 million total lives, billions of dollars in property, and the complete destruction of a once great and ancient civilization.

1) The Iraq War was not illegal

2) Are you seriously calling Iraq under Saddam Hussein a "great and ancient civilization"?

reply to post by bakednutz


No thanks to the Democrats, aka surrendercrats.

when even their puppet regime in Iraq tells them get the hell out of here, The war is lost . Americans are now getting the message loud and clear .
it is time for the Press to paint a picture of victory on a war that has cost America its legacy

Only in America will the dead and wounded be weighed in as a victory.

So desperate are those warmongers among you to claim a victory at war
that all manor of cognitive thought is lost .

On the one hand the American legacy is tarred and feathered
,through American governmental decree Torture was sanctioned and
the Geneva conventions broken. The covenant of nations has been spat upon by America.

the highlights of the war was

1 ) British soldiers dressed like Arabs getting arrested with IED explosives

2 ) the American sanctioned Torture

3 ) friendly fire deaths of people like Pat Tilman who were probably going to speak out against the war and the murdering of journalists not in bed with the military.

4 ) Depleted Uranium killing and maiming of the American soldiers

5 ) not rebuilding infrastructure ,but protecting the oil fields, building
permanent mega bases , wasting Tax dollars on a colossal scale

6 ) switching the oil for Euros policy of Saddam upon reaching Bagdad.

the hearts and minds of Iraqis have not been won will not be won and this will come back to Haunt America.

But it is America that will suffer the real costs of failure in IRaq and Afghanistan while the objective of an Oil pipe line from The Caspian basin looked good on paper it has proven to be an impossible dream for the west.
The Russians not only beat America to the oil, they made sure none was left for the pipe dreams ,schemed up by the neocons and think tanks in America, that are filled with senile old men, that are long past their prime.


Ultimately it is the American people the beasts of burden that will suffer the brunt of the defeat,as their economy implodes and millions of jobs are lost in the next few years it will give them time to reflect if they still can .