The Truth About the SURGE!

I've avoided this topic long enough, mostly because it's been beaten to death on the Bill Manders show (hell, they're re-running his Friday show on this topic today), but I couldn't resist once I saw his headline.

RGJ: Cheney Lashes Out at Harry Reid

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada on Tuesday of pursuing a defeatest strategy in Iraq to win votes in the next election -- a charge Reid said did not warrant a response.

The two sparred hours after President Bush said he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress, which includes a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.

Cheney, after attending the weekly Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill, lashed out at Reid.

"Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics," Cheney said. "Sen. Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election.

"It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage," Cheney said.

Reid, D-Nev., dismissed Cheney's remarks later to reporters, but not before getting in his own dig at the vice president.

"I'm not going to get into a name calling match with the administration's chief attack dog," Reid said.

That last line killed me. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, but you have to admit that calling someone a name whilst saying that you don't want to enter a name-calling match is funny, even if Cheney is the administration's attack dog. If I were Harry Reid, I would've put a sarcastic spin on a term of esteem, such as "I'm not going to get into a name calling match with the always dignified, never unintelligent Vice President."

Cheney's assessment of the War on Iraq giving the Democrats seats in the next election is actually quite accurate, but also quite obvious. The Democrats don't really have to do anything to gain seats in the next election. But is political gain the main reason why Sen. Reid even uttered the words "the war is lost" in succession?

No. He said them because it's the truth, and as I always say, the truth has a liberal bias.

The truth is that Iraq has gotten really deadly, not just for Iraqis, but our soldiers as well. Larry Johnson, who "worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism" (so he knows a thing or two about terrorism and war), wrote on his blog last Wednesday that 364 Iraqis were killed between April 15th and April 18th (source). Yesterday he wrote that 9 American soldiers were killed and 20 more were injured "in a suicide car bombing against a patrol base northeast of the capital in Diyala province" (source, quoting an AP article). Read those articles and tell me that the SURGE! is going well.

Some people (including Manders) say that we liberals want the SURGE! to fail. We already know that it will fail, because this isn't the first SURGE!. Oh no, there've been other SURGE!s over the past 3 years. Does "Operation Together Forward" ring a bell? It should, because that was when we SURGE!d into Iraq between July and October 2006 (source). You know how Bush says that he listens to "the generals on the ground?" Well, he didn't listen to Major General William Caldwell, who said that Operation Together Forward "[did not meet] our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence" (source). So even the generals on the ground didn't think that that SURGE! worked.

Further SURGE!s can be documented in the Brookings Institute's Iraq Index (PDF link). The table in question is on page 23, titled "Coalition Troop Strength in Iraq since May 2003," and that table was taken from tens of articles and statistical compilations. This table shows numerous other SURGE!s, such as the SURGE! that happened between September and November 2005 (22,000 additional troops with no long-term benefits), or the between November 2004 and February 2005 (12,000 additional troops with no long-term benefits), or even the SURGE! between January and May 2004 that happened during troop rotations (7,000 troops reduction followed by a 20,000 troop addition with no long-term benefits).

So the right-wingers won't tell you that there have actually been nearly as many troop SURGE!s as there have been Rocky movies. The only reason why this is news is because the Democrats are now in power, and President Bush isn't used to not getting his way. This story has spread throughout the Right Wing Talking Points Network, hitting just about every major conservative talk show in the country. I'm surprised that a petition hasn't been created to try and recall Reid. There sure has been enough talk of it on right-wing websites. That's just like the typical conservative: all talk and no walk.

It is in this vein that I urge you to call Senator Reid and tell him that you support his views. It's great Americans like him that will help get our troops out of a civil war in Iraq and actually working to capture the real bad guy from 9/11. Does anyone remember a guy named Osama bin Laden?

Reno Office: (775) 686-5750
Carson City Office: (775) 882-7343
Las Vegas Office: (702) 388-5020
Congressional Office: 1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343) (Nevadans only); (202) 224-3542

~ Deep Blue

Update (11:22 PM PDT): JWH over at The Blog Formerly Known as "No Gibbons" has the Reid quote listed above as "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating" in his latest post. This quoting comes from the New York Times. I am going to keep my quote as-is because the RGJ article still states it as above, although this alternate quote (additional quote?) is just as funny.