Iraq: Violence 70% Down Since June

iceaura said:
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.
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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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This is all really irrelevant. O.K. America raised the death rates and half the Iraqis are dead now, but still......... violence is down and things are turning around.

Maybe you were wishing too much for defeat that now you can't see victory when it's coming.
 
S.A.M. said:
According to several studies, about 75-90% of Iraqi deaths are underreported by media.
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O.K. I'll give you that. So the reported 10% of deaths is now 70% down. This is a huge success for the victory-strategy of president Bush, given the defeatist-surge that he had to confront this year.
 
countezero said:
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...
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is not just a little cold and crass to compare our soldiers lives with stock prices
 
Hani said:
O.K. I'll give you that. So the reported 10% of deaths is now 70% down. This is a huge success for the victory-strategy of president Bush, given the defeatist-surge that he had to confront this year.
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How do you know that the underreporting has not intensified?
 
You mean like they are now reporting only 3% of the actual deaths?

I don't think hiding 97% of the casualties is really possible.
 
pjdude1219 said:
is not just a little cold and crass to compare our soldiers lives with stock prices
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You can try to cast sentiment into this all you like, but I believe the topic of this thread was percentages and you asked whether the decline you outlined in your scenario was actually a decline. It is. And I gave you a real-world example of why it is.
 
I never did wish for defeat and I resent the implication. I don't see another victory coming (remember Bush on the battleship?), and neither do most Americans or Iraqis. The only ones still living in a fantasy world of optimism are the Bush administration and their loyal lapdogs on the right.
 
Hani said:
You mean like they are now reporting only 3% of the actual deaths?

I don't think hiding 97% of the casualties is really possible.
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Why? Who's checking?

First, it is extremely difficult to gauge with any accuracy how many civilians are killed in Iraq, so any empirical findings should be greeted with skepticism. That is because census data is poor; many deaths go unreported; and there is often double-counting because it is oftentimes difficult to determine a civilian from a combatant. Morgue, hospital or government statistics are also notoriously unreliable. And any statistical analysis by outside researchers generally relies on cluster sampling, which poses problematic issues with sample sizes because of Iraq's shifting demographics.

Second, even if casualties are down overall this year, they are still dangerously high and way above 2004-2005 levels, not to mention that whatever number is reached does not include those tortured or kidnapped. Plus, many Iraqi Muslims simply bury their dead and do not go through an undertaker or hospital.

Third, trend lines are often short-lived and futile to predict. Proclaiming civilian casualties are sloping downward is akin to saying the insurgency is in its last throes. Plus, these trend lines obscure the fact that any temporary decline in casualties can be explained because of the ethnic cleansing of once heterogeneous Iraqi cities and neighborhoods. Of course, an Iraq comprising just Sunni Arabs could result in zero sectarian casualties but a homogeneous Iraq is presumably not the end goal.

Finally, the fault for all this confusion lies with the U.S. military, which decided early on it was not worth counting Iraqi civilian casualties. Even the term given to their tragic loss at the hands of U.S. forces -- "collateral damage" -- smacks of bureaucratic hubris. (A chilling segment on 60 Minutes reports that 30 civilians killed was the magic number Pentagon officials could live with when targeting a "high-value" terrorist in Afghanistan; anything higher requires approval from the defense secretary or president.)
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lionel-beehner/are-civilian-deaths-in-ir_b_70276.html
 
Hani said:
Actually I heard general petraeus himself assures this on TV. Iraqis will never say good about anything, I don't care what they say; let the numbers talk :)
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Right, because we always believe what our generals say... along with what statistics say..Surges tend to work for a short time, then when they cut out, troops find themselves overwhelmed.
 
This things will never end as long as there is the Iranian regime and the Syrian regime; I don't want to oversimplify issues.

But things have changed in Iraq in a deep and a dramatic manner. It was not just because of the surge, the surge had a minor effect. Change happened because Sunnis have been turning against al-qaida and fighting it, this is the main reason for improvement there.
 
So, things are going great AND there is no end in sight. AND we need to fight Iran and Syria. Is that what we are supposed to believe?
 
countezero said:
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...
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This has been the case for a while; from the start of OIF to a lesser extent. Outside of my fellow Marines and a few former college professors, trying to find people who are interested in discussing the facts and realities of the situation objectively is usually a fool's errand. As an otherwise politically disinterested participant in and observer to this conflict, it is hard to have conversations about it with the average citizen because I'll find myself being shouted down by partisans of all sides who feel their position threatened. Bragging rights are more important than understanding the best way forward. Sad.
 
Considering we went into this war, not for self-defense, but for political reasons, by choice, it is impossible to have a complete picture of what's happening without talking about politics. Bush/Cheney's views are far from "objective", and that must be taken into account when responding to their rosy images of Iraq.
 
spidergoat said:
So, things are going great AND there is no end in sight. AND we need to fight Iran and Syria. Is that what we are supposed to believe?
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Actually you could have arranged these sentences in a better way:

Things are going great; but there is no end in sight if we don't fight Iran and Syria. This is what we are supposed to believe.

Spidergoat

I did it for you, even with the name and everything :p
 
Hani said:
This things will never end as long as there is the Iranian regime and the Syrian regime; I don't want to oversimplify issues.

But things have changed in Iraq in a deep and a dramatic manner. It was not just because of the surge, the surge had a minor effect. Change happened because Sunnis have been turning against al-qaida and fighting it, this is the main reason for improvement there.
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Hmm quite coincidentally, the "Al Qaeda" is most prolific until the "Sunni insurgents" obtain arms and funding from the US troops. After that, they immediately stop; almost as if they were just waiting for the insurgents to get the money.
 
S.A.M. said:
Hmm quite coincidentally, the "Al Qaeda" is most prolific until the "Sunni insurgents" obtain arms and funding from the US troops. After that, they immediately stop; almost as if they were just waiting for the insurgents to get the money.
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Well if this has broguht violence 70% down then where is the harm? and it will last because I don't think al-qaida can sacrifice the US money payments.
 
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