PETRAEUS ON THE SURGE

This has gotten some wingnuts sticky wet.

Surge working: top US general
Dennis Shanahan, in Baghdad August 31, 2007
The Australian

(excerpts)

David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said the build-up of American forces in Baghdad since late January had produced positive outcomes. These included the killing or capture of al-Qa'ida fighters, causing the terrorist group to lose influence with local Sunnis.

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year, a doubling in the seizure of insurgents' weapons caches between January and August, a rise in the number of al-Qa'ida "kills and captures" and a fall in the number of coalition deaths from roadside bombings.

"We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al-Qa'ida is off balance at the very least," he said.

General Petraeus said the surge strategy, involving the deployment of an extra 20,000 troops in Iraq, would continue for a few months before the troop level in the country was phased down. But the objective was to hold all the gains that had been made so far.

He acknowledged there was still too much violence and that al-Qa'ida and militias with the "malign involvement" of Iran were still serious threats. But the surge strategy had turned the US forces into pursuers instead of defenders. "And that is a much better place to be than to be doing a deliberate attack into their defences, like we had to do in Ramadi," he said. "Ramadi was like Stalingrad."

According to General Petraeus's figures, which will be put to Congress, the number of ethnic- and religious-related deaths would be down to a quarter of what they were last December by the end of August. He said "ethno-sectarian deaths" were the most important measure of progress.

"If you look at Baghdad, which is hugely important because it is the centre of everything in Iraq, you can see the density plot on ethno-sectarian deaths," he said.

"It's a bit macabre but some areas were literally on fire with hundreds of bodies every week and a total of 2100 in the month of December '06, Iraq-wide.

"It is still much too high but we think in August in Baghdad it will be as little as one quarter of what it was."

The number of weapons-cache captures had doubled from 1977 in January this year to 4141 in August.

General Petraeus said "improvised explosive devices" -- roadside bombs -- were the largest killer in Iraq and in "another indicator that is reassuring, this has come down for about eight of the last 11 weeks to the lowest in at least a year, Iraq-wide".

"We see al-Qa'ida as public enemy No1 because it is the enemy that carries out the most horrific attacks designed to re-ignite ethno-sectarain violence," he said.

"That is not to say militia extremists supported by Iran are not of enormous concern because they are.

"There is growing concern by the Iraqi Government, by us, and our own Government as we have learned more and more about the degree of this malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed."