PETRAEUS, ockupationens general

Högsta chefen för USA-trupperna i Irak David Petraeus har inför kongressen lagt upp en framgångshistoria kring Irak som få vågar svälja. Moveon.org har i The New York Times publicerat en annons som slår hål på generalens fantasier (läs nedan).

Enligt Petraeus har våldet minskat. Men som Moveon.org påpekar är det framförallt våldstatistiken som har förändrats. Med ökad truppnärvaro i Bagdad har våldet flyttat utanför huvudstaden, som nu fördubblats. Det förekommer också en grov manipulering av statistiken, ett skott i nacken är sekteristiskt våld, medan ett skott i pannan är kriminellt våld och räknas därför inte in i statistiken. Döda i bilbomber räknas inte heller. Enligt Washington Post har fler civila och fler USA-soldater dödats under de tre senaste månaderna jämfört med samma månader tidigare år sedan ockupationen 2003.


GENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US?

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was "tangible progress" in Iraq and that "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward." And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, "We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress."

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front. According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there. We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.

Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.

Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us. Cooking the Books for the White House