The discord among Republicans on the Hill over Iraq may be palpable, but Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) just returned from Baghdad, and wouldn’t you know it, he agrees wholeheartedly with Bush, Cheney, McCain, and Lieberman.
In contrast with the stalled political progress, Graham said, the surge — the dispatch of 30,000 more U.S. troops that Bush began in January — is yielding clear results.
“The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations,” Graham said. “We literally have the enemy on the run. The Sunni part of Iraq has really rejected al Qaida all over the country. We’re getting more information about al Qaida operations than we’ve ever received.”
Of course, there’s war supporters’ reality, and then there’s the reality for the rest of us.
Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released [three weeks ago]….
Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results. Iraqi leaders have made “little progress” on the overarching political goals that the stepped-up security operations are intended to help advance, the report said, calling reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni factions “a serious unfulfilled objective.”
For that matter, a week ago marked the end of the deadliest quarter for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. And July is proving to be no less discouraging.
A suicide truck bomber blasted a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing more than 100 people, police said, in a sign Sunni insurgents are pulling away from a U.S. offensive around the capital to attack where security is thinner.
The marketplace devastation underlined a hard reality in Iraq: There are not enough forces to protect everywhere. U.S. troops, already increased by 28,000 this year, are focused on bringing calm to Baghdad, while the Iraqi military and police remain overstretched and undertrained.
The U.S. military on Saturday also reported that eight American service members were killed in fighting in Baghdad and western Anbar province over two days, reflecting the increased U.S. casualties that have come with the new offensives.
But don’t worry, Lindsey Graham sees progress. And since his track record on the war has been sterling to date, we should all take his word for it.
