My job is to make sure that ur safe...so I want to do may job and come home..thats the simplist answer. Yeah everybody wants to come home but we have to finish the job first. I'll be on tour 3, I don't want to go but I feel I have to go. Speaking for myself, I want victoy...the alternative puts u or ur children at risk. It won't go away because we come home. A defeated AQ and asecure Iraq will keep things quiet in that part of the world for awhile. Decker....the surge is forcing AQ out of key area's. Death's are down. Its pretty easy to see by how many guys are'nt getting killed as opposed to this time last year, and our tactics are way more aggressive. The people are turning against AQ and sectarian violence is down. I guess I pose the same question, how do u know its not. Hell even the media is saying things are better, even by their silence.
Deaths are down and that is a good thing. I think the fact that over 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the country and another 2 million have been displaced sort of accounts for that. That's a fifth of the entire population.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/20/damon.iraqrefugees/index.htmlThe most recent GAO report
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08231t.pdfConcluded that 'enemy-initiated attacks declined from a total of about 5,300 in June of 2007 to about 3,000 in September of 2007. This decrease reflects a decline in attacks on US troops. Attacks against Iraqi SEcurity forces and civilians haven't declined in the same manner.
Also, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency the incidents reported by the military re these attacks do not account for all violence throughout IRaq, only those areas with a coalition presence.
According to a UN report from 10-15-2007, the Iraqi people and government is still failing. There is a massive level of civilian displacement (Iraqis fleeing Iraq).
The Iraqi government still has not met the legislative benchmarks imposed on it by the US--that was the whole purpose of the surge--to secure Iraq to the point where political progress could be made.
I don't think success in Iraq will put one dent into Al Qaeda b/c by its nature, AQ is a decentralized entity. There is no "central front on terrorism", that's pre-9/11 thinking.
Whatever comes of this, I just hope the deaths continue to decline.
Anyways, the story making the rounds now is some Iraqi Interior Ministry statement that violence in Iraq has dropped 70% since June of 07.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSCOL24813120071022?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true Of course at the end of that report was this: Police said six gunmen were killed in police raids in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad.
Some 50 people were killed in Kerbala in August in fierce clashes between fighters loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and local police, who are seen as aligned to the rival Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council's armed wing, the Badr Organization.
Obviously the Iraqi Interior Ministry Report conflicts with the GAO findings.
