The truth is what the Senate's top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid is quoted as saying by the Sun: "... the troop escalation has been under way for six months and [in Reid's own words] 'is not working'."
• Lie number one by the president (as quoted directly from the Sun article):
The new troops "just showed up and they're now beginning operations in full, and in Washington you got people saying stop," said Bush, whose remarks about the war drew silence from an otherwise enthusiastic Cleveland audience.
As the article itself says, the troop escalation or "surge" has been at full strength since the last installment of new U.S. fighters arrived "weeks ago." The president's prefixing "weeks ago" with "only" is intentionally deceptive and misleading.
• Lie number two:
[Bush] said Congress should give the commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, "a chance to fully implement his operations" and wait for his progress report in September.
General Petraeus has been taking advantage of the chance to "fully implement operations" for several months. As oldstyleliberal pointed out recently in Congress Needs To Impose an Endgame in Iraq, Petraeus and the military he commands are down to what is essentially a rear-guard mission. According to the Washington Post recently (see that earlier blog post):
For its part, the [U.S.] military has calculated that a veto-proof congressional majority is unlikely to demand a full, immediate withdrawal. But however long the troops remain, and in whatever number, [a] military intelligence official said [under condition of anonymity], they see a clear mission ahead. "We're going to get it as stable as we can, with the troops we have, and in the time available. And then, we'll back out as carefully as we can," the official said.
Preparing to "back out as carefully as we can" after "getting it as stable as we can ... in the time available" is a definition, not of victory, but of minimizing our losses. The president is lying to us to suggest that we can still, at this late date, achieve more than that.
• Lie number three by Bush:
In advance of an interim White House report on Iraq, to be released this week, Bush acknowledged that "the Iraqis have got to do more work."As the Post coverage shows, there is now zero chance, barring a miracle from God, that "doing more work" will produce a breakthrough:
According to several senior officials who agreed to discuss the situation in Iraq only on the condition of anonymity, the political goals that seemed achievable earlier this year remain hostage to the security situation. If the extreme violence were to decline, Iraq's political paralysis might eventually subside. "If they are arguing, accusing, gridlocking," one official said, "none of that would mean the country is falling apart if it was against the backdrop of a stabilizing security situation."
From a military perspective, however, the political stalemate is hampering security. "The security progress we're making is real," said a senior military intelligence official in Baghdad. "But it's only in part of the country, and there's not enough political progress to get us over the line in September."
In other words, the situation is gridlocked. A political stalemate in Iraq feeds the ongoing extreme violence and lack of security. Yet Iraq's political progress "remains hostage to the security situation." It's a classic catch-22. Again, the president is lying to us by suggesting it isn't.
• Lie number four from Bush:
Bush spoke in broad terms about a new strategy, saying he'd be "glad to discuss different options," based on what military commanders tell him. The White House and the Congress "can work together on a way forward" after Petraeus reports in September, he said.
Bush has never, ever been "glad to discuss different options" concerning Iraq. Never, ever.
• Lie number five:
The president warned of the threat posed by al-Qaida in Iraq, describing it repeatedly as part of the organization behind the Sept. 11 attacks, a linkage that anti-terrorism experts say is inaccurate and misleading. ...
"The same people that attacked us on Sept. 11 is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children" in Iraq, Bush said.
As the article itself shows, "al-Qaida in Iraq" — which is the name of the organization — did not even exist at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. In fact, it exists as a direct result of the Bush war in Iraq:
The terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in Iraq "are not the same," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University terrorism specialist, who called Bush's statement "inaccurate, if not misleading."
Today's al-Qaida in Iraq fighters "are patently not the same people who attacked us on 9/11," Hoffman wrote [to the Sun] in an e-mail response. U.S. military authorities in Iraq believe al-Qaida in Iraq is made up of 90 percent Iraqis and 10 percent foreign fighters, he said.
Insurgents in Iraq and the al-Qaida cell responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "are only in the very loosest sense part of the same organization," Hoffman said.
Al-Qaida in Iraq is a Sunni group organized by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who declared allegiance to al-Qaida in 2004. Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006.
If it weren't for our invasion of Iraq, it's doubtful al-Qaida in Iraq would have gotten off the ground.
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