Ron Paul: "The Surge Was An Absolute Failure"
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 10:20PM CHETRY: You've gotten a lot of support because of your anti-war stance, your belief that we should pull out of Iraq. But how would you do that in practicality and make that work at the point we're in now?PAUL: Well, one thing we know is what we're doing now isn't working. You know, this is our worst year for Americans killed in Iraq. So the surge was an absolute failure, and now, we're no closer to a peaceful country.CHETRY: We've seen for the past three months, those numbers actually dramatically decline. At the beginning of the year, we did have a spike in U.S. troops but since then it has declined.
PAUL: Yes. Yes, but the surge has been going on, you know, for more months than that and we have to look at, over the year. But the odds of all of a sudden, us coming up with a unified, Democratic country in Iraq is unbelievable.
Really? That's not what the facts on the ground say. Take, for example, this briefing last week from Baghdad with Multi-National Force-Iraq's second in command LT GEN Ray Odierno in which he reported:
(transcript) (slides)
The surge allowed us to increase our combat brigades from 15 to 20 between January and June, as well as the establishment of joint security stations and combat outposts where the Iraqi people live.
We have been able to eliminate key safe havens, liberate portions of the population and hamper the enemy's ability to conduct coordinated attacks. We have experienced a consistent and steady trend of increased security over the last four months....
Over the past four months, attacks and security incidents have continued to decline. This trend represents the longest continuous decline in attacks on record and illustrates how our operations have improved security since the surge was emplaced. Of note, this four-month decline includes Ramadan, a time during the previous three years when enemy activity has traditionally spiked.
Also total attack levels are back before their levels since the first Samarra mosque bombing in February 2006 -- an event that ignited a wave of sectarian violence. For this same week last year, Al Anbar province experiences 303 attacks. That number has been reduced to less than 30 this past week. Within Baghdad, the weekly reduction from October 2006 to October 2007 was down from 143 attacks in 2006 to under 100 attacks in 2007.
IED explosions have been on a constant and steady downward trend for the past four months. They are also at their lowest level since October of 2004, when they were on an upward trend. One final note on this chart -- in 2004, 2005 and 2006, IED explosions peaked during Ramadan. However that effect was noticeably absent in 2007.
Iraqi civilian deaths have also declined in recent months. This has a great deal to do with the overall drop in violence but also has a lot to do with Iraqis coming together as a nation and not dividing along ethnic and sectarian lines. Sectarianism is still present but it has diminished, and we are seeing more evidence of the populace identifying themselves not as Sunni or Shi'a but as Iraqi.
Even one coalition death is too many, but we are experiencing a five- month decline in combat deaths. While this is encouraging, we will not be satisfied until we drive this to zero. Our combat deaths in October were the lowest monthly total since February 2004 and the sixth lowest since the beginning of the war.
I’m taking GEN Odierno’s word for it, not Ron Paul’s.
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Reader Comments (13)
I guess he wants to be as popular as Harry Reid, John Murtha, and the rest of these F---ing jerks who want to tell us the hard work and sacrifices our fine young soldiers have made mean NOTHING!!
I'm getting tired of this, having to read crap like this right after finding out a local boy lost his life over there is especially odious.
Amy,
I'll take your Hubby's word, the word of many milbloggers I've come to know, and the word of many kids who've actually BEEN THERE! and done great things, over the word of an old, crazy sack of hot air running for president.
http://class8commentary.blogspot.com/2007/11/local-son-dies-in-iraq.html
Mark, thanks. I'll have to read the story at the URL.
I don't understand. Is it good that we're spending trillions of dollars and losing thousands of American lives so that we can have diminished attacks in Iraq for a few months in a row? Should we stay there indefinitely to try to keep the lid on?
I hope Gen. Odierno is right, but if you'll pardon me, with all due respect, he's hardly an impartial source for reportage. I don't buy for a moment that Iraq is going to coelesce under a secular, westernized democratic government propped up by the U.S. I think it's more likely we're seeing a pause in the violence, not an end to it.
Just curious...How do you explain the fact that the two most anti-war candidates are leading the field in campaign contributions from military personnel and veterans?
This is the same guy who thinks the rent-a-cops at shopping malls do more for our protection than the Marine Corps. Look at the day he raised that money...November 5.
That's Guy Fawkes day. The day he tried to blow up Parlaiment. It is more a reflection of general dissatisfaction with government in general. Since the Guy Fawkes wannabe cannot bring himself to see reality, he should be dismissed as part of the lunatic fringe.
David, the 2 most anti-war candidates? Ron Paul and who? At any rate, I'd explain it by saying Ron Paul has energized libertarians.
More importantly, Ron Paul isn't a front runner for the Republican nomination. Giuliani, Romney, McCain round out the top. Is Ron Paul even in double digits? How he does in the primaries will say a lot about the Republican Party, but I dare say it isn't Republicans by and large who are supporting Ron Paul. I'd suspect some are also MoveOn.org types donating money. But whatever, I don't think the money makes any difference in terms of the outcome of the economy, but Ron Paul is doing his part in stimulating the economy! Beyond that I wouldn't read too much into it.
You misunderstand military leaders, David. They are not partisans like Ron Paul. Paul has nothing to back up his assertions. LT GEN Odierno is on the ground, living the life and reporting the facts.
Iraq is not supposed to resemble a western democracy. They can make of it what they will. It's an insult to all U.S. soldiers and Iraqis who have died in Iraq to say their government is "propped up" by the U.S. These are a very strong, resilient people who have stepped up to the plate to find their own independence in the middle of decades of unphathomable hardship. The U.S. has a supporting role but they are a sovereign country function well and in less time than the U.S. did in its beginning. We are there at their request and every 6 months they review our status, deciding if we stay or go. They want us there but the minute they don't, we're making plans to exit.
I don't understand something, either; how people can argue with hard numbers, be negative instead of happy in the improvement in other people's lives yet give more distinction to UFO sightings than overt, irrefutible progress in Iraq.
The UFO-sighter.
I believe you are confusing Ron Paul with Dennis Kucinich here. Quite understandable, and easy to do in matters of foreign policy...and a few "out of this world" notions.
That's an unfortunate sound bite. I wish RP would refrain from making those types of comments. He should have lauded the efforts of the troops and left it at that. David M's point is right though, in the end, we can't afford to stay there indefinitely, which basically is the plan right now.
I contributed on 11/5 and my #1 reason to support a guy like RP is to send the GOP establishment a message. The ONLY difference between the DNC and the GOP today is where they want to spend the money and where they want to send the troops. That's it. And that's sad. Call me a nut if you want, but I'll risk RP for a chance at real change than accept this homogenized group of fake conservatives any day. Until we get a President who will REDUCE the size of government, it doesn't matter who the President is.
The effort to make 2007 sound like the worst year is identical to the attempts to pronounce on the Surge mere days or weeks after its announcement, long before it was in place. Arbitrary choice of start-stop points for statistics is a well-known manipulation. But stats only make sense when they are patterned after the events they are supposed to measure.
It seems to be full-court press time for the Ds' attempts to squelch the victory, as indicated by their attempt to exclude war funding from the DoD appropriations. Kind of micro-managing the budget to achieve defeat. Paul's inanities are just part of the effort.
Ron Paul:Whose fundraising prowess has been tarised by reports that credit card information was STOLEN to make a sizeable number of those contributions.
David said: "I don't buy for a moment" that we can succeed in Iraq.
Reminds me of the libs who insisted that Reagan had nothing to do with winning the Cold War even after Gorbachev admitted that the Strategic Defense Initiative which liberals STILL oppose, was the key to our victory.
Of course folks like David can NEVER admit that they are WRONG. It would be too painful to face the accountability for error they have so long demanded of others.
Mike, I actually posted an entry last night about the stolen credit card money and deleted it because there were hundreds (maybe thousands) of $5 donations from stolen credit cards. The amount wasn't much and Paul's campaign immediately returned the $$. I think it amounted to $3000 worth of donations.
Amen to your last paragraph!
It is funny, since you and Jon have very similar policies to Ron Paul except when it comes to policing the world. I wouldn't be so fast to say that his is wrong or misguided. At some point you will have to pay attention to the nagging voice in your head that tells you killing foreigners on foreign soil was never the purpose of the founders of this country.