[Dean's World] Dean: Shocking the Pessimists

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dean:
Shocking the Pessimists
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1144306945.shtml


   The site "My Election Analysis" has an amusing post up [1]noting the
   "shocking" fact that combat fatalities are down massively in Iraq.

   It's amusing because the shock is genuine--and I'd rather be amused by
   it than angry and bitter. Those of us who care about the facts and
   who've been watching these numbers all along have known what they look
   like. Except for the brief lull between the fall of Baghdad and the
   beginning of the fascist "insurgency" a couple of months later, the
   violence there has been characterized by crests and troughs. The
   crests happen every time a major new event is scheduled that would
   take Iraq closer to democratic freedom and independence. The trough is
   always when the insurgency fails to prevent that event from
   transpiring.

   Furthermore, what's obvious over time is that their crests get lower
   and lower and lower, as they get weaker and weaker and weaker. (See
   fully-sourced charts [2]here.)

   Those who've talked themselves into believing in failure in Iraq
   nowadays try to get away with it by claiming that it's because our
   troops are "hiding," but that's balderdash. Yes, our troops are doing
   less, and letting the native Iraqi security forces do more and
   more--which was the plan all along.

   Yet despite the fact that the native Iraqi forces continually
   increase, and take over more and more of the security on their own,
   here's what their combat fatalities look like:

   [3]iraqi security total deaths by month 

   D'oh! Rats! So sorry for the defeatist gloom'n'doom squad: lately, as
   the Iraqi forces take over more and more of the country, they also
   take fewer and fewer casualties.

   The last desperate attempt of the gloomsters will be to turn away from
   all this undeniably fantastic evidence of success and try to claim
   that the important metric now is how many Iraqi civilians are killed.
   Those who do that will, I predict, routinely fail to point out just
   how many Iraqis on average died every day because of Saddam's rule.
   Nor will they make the obvious connection: if the brutal fascist
   "insurgency" has become so weak and cowardly they've turned
   increasingly to murdering civilians, isn't that all the more reason to
   try to defeat them rather than simply running home and crying to mommy
   about how big stupid Rumsfeld screwed it all up?

   You know, there would be much more good we could do in Iraq if there
   were more public support for it. It's just a damned shame we have a
   press corps that's so shallow, unprofessional, and downright
   unpatriotic that all they want to report is gloom and failure.

   I mean, it's like they're biased or something.

   (By the way, would someone do me a favor and tell [4]Greg Djerejian to
   go to the hospital and get those gashes he put in his wrists treated?
   We're not losing Greg, and we haven't been losing either. It is simply
   amazing how some people will take the silk purse that is Iraq and try
   to mangle it into a sow's ear, based on nothing but press accounts and
   pessimistic analysts. Baghdad hasn't turned into San Francisco
   overnight. Well la-dee-da, I never thought it would, did you?)

References

   1. http://www.myelectionanalysis.com/?p=875
   2. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1144074353.shtml
   3. file://localhost/files/deanesmay-Iraqi_cops_&_soldiers.GIF
   4. http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/