Iraq: Violence 70% Down Since June

Hani are you an Iraqi?

re: surge "working", it's a good development, but nothing is clear yet. as one US general noted a few weeks ago, "we have done everything military possible to prevent Sunni vs. Shia infighting. now it's up to them to talk over their differences".

any drop in carbombs is temporary. the 2 sides must address things between themselves to deal with the underlying issues
 
Tiassa said:
Isn't the war in which someone tried to convince us that the violence was down by omitting car bombs, or suicide bombs, or something like that?

Okay, anyway, we have to account for government-speak. Since the measure of "violence" is so murky coming from this administration, I thoiught I would note an old conventional wisdom regarding budget cuts.

Statement: "I cut twenty percent from the department budget."

Meaning: "I cut twenty percent from the expected increase in the department's budget."

In effect: If the department budget was a billion dollars last year, and the projected budget is $1.1b, that twenty percent cut represented a $20m cut from the increase, so that a $1b budget reduced by 20% has actually grown to $1.08b.

I don't know if they can actually get away with this argument these days. It was a popular argument back before Clinton. I would think people might catch on ....
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Well, I am sure that they can get away with going down from 1900 civilian casualties in January to 200 in October.
 
otheadp said:
Hani are you an Iraqi?

re: surge "working", it's a good development, but nothing is clear yet. as one US general noted a few weeks ago, "we have done everything military possible to prevent Sunni vs. Shia infighting. now it's up to them to talk over their differences".

any drop in carbombs is temporary. the 2 sides must address things between themselves to deal with the underlying issues
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I am Syrian. Actually I don't think there are any real differences between them, at least not ones that they would fight over...

The only real differences are between Iran/Syria/Qaida and the US. And since that al-Qaida is fading away, things are getting better. Remain Iran and Syria, and here is the REAL issue.
 
It was more like 595 in October.
http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeathsByYear.aspx

2007 sees the worst bombings ever – and more of them
Early indications are that roughly 20,000 violent civilian deaths will be recorded for the first 9 months of 2007. By year’s end, 2007 looks to be the second-worst calendar year for violence in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, trailing only behind 2006, and still almost twice as deadly for civilians as the first year.

It is important to place the events of 2007 in context. Levels of violence reached an all-time high in the last six months of 2006. Only in comparison to that could the first half of 2007 be regarded as an improvement. Despite any efforts put into the surge, the first six months of 2007 was still the most deadly first six months for civilians of any year since the invasion.
 
According to your numbers, the number of civilians deaths in Iraq came down from 3014 in Feb 2007 to only 595 in Oct 2007.

595 is the lowest number of deaths since April 2005.
 
Actually I don't think there are any real differences between them, at least not ones that they would fight over...
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You must mean there are no differences worthy of fighting over. Because rest assured there is real hatred going on, and people are dying over thsoe differences.
 
I heard there were less coffins being made or something also. Gravediggers getting less work. Not sure if it's true of course; but I don't know it's not either.
 
Hani, the surge started in February. How can you brag about reducing the deaths we caused to be artificially high in the first place? This isn't a sustainable increase in the US presence there.
 
This is true. But if you're discussing whether deaths have come down as an unrooted issue, there may be a case for saying there has. What the likes of politicians might do or not do with such numbers, of course, probably defies in sum immorality what Haliburton considers a "decent profit".
 
The deaths are not accurately counted - and the Iraqis now in charge of counting are keenly aware of what numbers are desireable.

But there could easily have been a decrease in violence, for several reasons besidels the surge. For one thing, the walls and ethnic cleansings have made progress - Iraqis no longer live in mixed-sect neighborhoods as often as they used to, and many ghettos and sanctuaries have walls now, newly constructed. This reduces both motive and opportunity.

For another, many more thousands of Iraqis have fled the country recently, reducing both motive and opportunity - at some point, the thinning of the population has an effect even if the deomgraphics that fled were not the commonly targetted, which they often were.

And so forth.
 
iceaura said:
The deaths are not accurately counted - and the Iraqis now in charge of counting are keenly aware of what numbers are desireable.
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Possibly. But this charge could apply to any survey of violence in Iraq, and has also been leveled at the Lancet article.

But there could easily have been a decrease in violence, for several reasons besidels the surge. For one thing, the walls and ethnic cleansings have made progress - Iraqis no longer live in mixed-sect neighborhoods as often as they used to, and many ghettos and sanctuaries have walls now, newly constructed. This reduces both motive and opportunity.
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Quite agree.

For another, many more thousands of Iraqis have fled the country recently, reducing both motive and opportunity - at some point, the thinning of the population has an effect even if the deomgraphics that fled were not the commonly targetted, which they often were.
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Here I disagree. I don't think the population has been "thinned" in most places.
 
spidergoat said:
Hani, the surge started in February. How can you brag about reducing the deaths we caused to be artificially high in the first place? This isn't a sustainable increase in the US presence there.
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The bolded part has received a surprisingly small amount of attention in the mainstream, at least less than I'd expect. The extra manpower that was rostered up for the surge came mostly from units whose ordinary deployment cycles would have had them relieving units that are in Iraq right now. Naturally, this raises the question of who will be relieving them when their 8/12/15 month tours are over. The hope is that the surge will create enough lasting stability so that MNF-I can begin drawing down its presence in-country, reducing manpower levels to what they were in 2006 by the summer of 2008, and to under ~120k personnel by election season. The timing isn't meant to look politically motivated - this particular timetable was predicated on the analysis of Petraeus and his advisors, and passed onto the CINC through the JCS - though it will probably look that way and be spun as such.

Basically, the endstrength in the surge was created using units that would've been deploying in the future, which means that there won't be enough assets to relieve them even to the levels we had back in 2006 before the surge began. There will need to be a reduction in troop levels once they get back, whether the situation in-country is compatible with that or not.
 
countezero said:
You're doing exactly what you accuse the other side of doing: Playing with numbers and showing what you want in order to make a political argument. If violence is down, it's down.
Further more you, like your party, have been against the surge from the start. So why should anyone listen to you?
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if something rises by 50% then goes down 20% has it really gone down( note these are not real percentages they are being used just to make a point)
 
pjdude1219 said:
if something rises by 50% then goes down 20% has it really gone down( note these are not real percentages they are being used just to make a point)
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Yes, it has. The logic behind that is used for the stock market report every single day.

In other news, this thread (and the attitudes on display here) is precisely why I've given up on talking about/caring about the Iraq issue. No matter what information is put out, the two sides of the political spectrum will carp about something else so they can still be "right" and claim to "really know" what's going on. Why any rational person attempts to follow this anymore is beyond me...
 
Echo3Romeo said:
Basically, the endstrength in the surge was created using units that would've been deploying in the future, which means that there won't be enough assets to relieve them even to the levels we had back in 2006 before the surge began. There will need to be a reduction in troop levels once they get back, whether the situation in-country is compatible with that or not.
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it can't be that bad. there must be some soldiers left somewhere...
 
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