Most Americans have probably already satisfied themselves that the Petraeus/Crocker duet was singing off key. But I have just read my hometown newspaper's coverage and it simply does not address all the distortions and outright lies that this testimony contains; and I then watched a fifteen minute treatment of CNN's Lou Dobb's Tonight that featured one of those "think tank intellectuals," who actually claimed that the Sunni and Shia leadership were enthusiastically embracing each other because of the success of the surge.
So, based on this evidence, I think that many of you share my need to read something that douses the stench of the last two days with some refreshing (but depressing) evidence about what is really going on in Iraq. To that end, I recommend this very nice and succinct rebuttal of the dynamic duo by the McClatchy news service reporters Nancy Youssef and Leila Fadel. (By the way, McClatchy is the most reliable American mainstream source on Iraq these days--better than the Washington Post and far, far better than the New York Times.) The senior reporter, Nancy Youssef, has been one of a handful of truly superb reporters in Iraq, and this article is no exception.
Some key points from McClatchy:
* There has been no real drop in civilian casualties among the Iraqis. The evidence presented is statistical sleight of hand.
* A "fall in violence" has taken place in some neighborhoods, but it is not the result of American troops suppressing sectarian violence. Quite the contrary, it is the result of the fact that violent ethnic cleansing has been completed. That is, previously mixed neighborhoods have been purified [usually with the aid of American troops, who drive away the armed militias (always labeled as "terrorists") that defend embattled Sunni residents].
* As a result of this sustained ethnic cleansing, which is continuing apace in the still mixed neighborhoods, the number of refugees inside and outside Iraq continues to mount dramatically, creating the kind of terminal misery that only losing your home and livelihood in a disaster area can produce.
The bottom line is simple: the surge, like its strategic predecessors, has contributed to the war by bringing the full brunt of American military violence to many new neighborhoods, by facilitating the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Baghdad; and by creating masses of newly displaced people, many of whom then join in the violence.