DON'T CRITICIZE PRESIDENT OBAMA FOR IRAQI MESS ... IT WAS ALWAYS A FLAWED POLICY WRAPPED IN ILLUSION

Republicans who voted to support the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 are now criticizing President Obama for not cleaning up their mess. It's time to get one thing clear: Iraq was a disaster built on false bravado and a pack of lies from Day One.

The lies started with claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Then there was the suggestion that the Iraq adventure would cost the U.S. about $1.7 billion, and would be paid for by Iraq's oil revenues. There was also the "Mission Accomplished" embarrassment in May of 2003, followed by the torture stories, which we famously denied. This was followed by President Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt in July of 2003. In September of 2004 CIA intelligence reports warned of civil war in Iraq, which President Bush blew off by saying that the CIA was "just guessing."

Then we had Dick Cheney's 2005 claim that the insurgency was in its "last throes" ...

There's more - much more - but you get the point. As former Marine and Rep. John Murtha (R-PA) pointed out, by 2005 the war in Iraq was a "flawed policy wrapped in illusion." Rep. Murtha added that we needed to get out of Iraq then. Things got so bad that before he left the White House even President Bush's Pentagon made it clear that Iraq was in a civil war by 2007.

Still, today we are hearing about the successes of the fabled "surge" that many Republicans point to as a success story that President Obama has undermined.

To those who point to the surge as a success story I have one thing to say to you: You've gotten the narrative on the surge wrong, on so many levels.

THE SURGE DID NOT WORK ... PERIOD
To believe that “the surge” worked requires one to believe that the drop in U.S. military deaths in Iraq after 2007 was tied to putting more U.S. soldiers on the ground in March of 2007. This was not the case. There are two things wrong with the "the surge worked" narrative.

First, what "the surge worked" crowd conveniently ignores is that it was designed to provide stability for national reconciliation so that specific political benchmarks could be met. Let me reiterate. The goals of the surge were national political reconciliation so that political benchmarks could be met.

Neither national reconciliation or the political benchmarks were ever met. We're seeing this in real time today. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki - who came to power in 2006 - helped make sure of this with his divisive sectarian policies. Without national conciliation or meeting political benchmarks it's pretty easy to say that the surge failed.

A second point "the surge worked" crowd needs to remember is that U.S. casualties declined in 2008 because of events that the U.S. military - and the Bush administration - had no control of between 2007 and 2008. Here's what actually happened …

1. The Moqtada al-Sadr ceasefire. For his own reasons, leading cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced that he would call for a six-month ceasefire by his Mahdi Army militia, which began in August, 2007 (and was later extended). This ceasefire helped level out the violence in Iraq.

2. The “Low-Hanging-Fruit-of-Death” Peaked: Simply put, early and vicious ethnic cleansing in Baghdad caused Shi'a and Sunni partisans to separate and move out of old integrated neighborhoods by August 2007. The early low hanging fruit of death – as it were – were no longer hanging out in the old neighborhoods, acting as targets or stirring up trouble. American soldiers were no longer in the middle of this mess.

3. The Wall(s) of Love: The physical separation of the Sunni-Shi'a combatants in Baghdad, with 12 ft. high walls, were completed as the surge was being implemented.

4. The Anbar Awakening: In September 2006 – six months before President Bush’s “surge” was implemented – a federation of Sunni tribes came together as the Anbar Salvation Council. They opposed the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda. The Sunni dominated council needed-wanted money and security. In return the council volunteered hundreds of tribesmen to serve as police officers and permitted the construction of police and military outposts.

Let’s be clear here. None of the above had anything to do with the surge.

There’s another problem with “the surge worked” fairytale.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION ...
While the number of U.S. military personnel who were killed in Iraq did taper off in 2008, the surge did not reduce overall violence in Iraq. In fact, Iraqi violence against other Iraqis remained relatively stable during the surge. One of the reasons we didn’t learn about this in the U.S. (apart from the fact that most Americans don't care about Iraqi deaths) is because of the way we count sectarian violence and civilian deaths. Check this out.

If you are an Iraqi who's shot in the front of the head you were (are?) simply listed as a victim of violent crime. This is a victory for the surge worked crowd. To be counted as part of the sectarian violence, and to get the U.S. sectarian-death-stamp-of-approval, you need to be shot in the back of the head. So, essentially, declining sectarian violence in Iraq is a product of bullet hole location.

Nice.

There you have it. From Day One the war in Iraq was built on deception and a pack of lies. Iraq's civil war actually began around 2005. Finally, the surge didn't work as much as it coincided with internal developments in Iraq that neither the U.S. military or the Bush administration had any control over.

- Mark