No One Doubts

Linda Wertheimer apparently never listened to the Lourdes Garcia-Navarro's report that she introduced on Friday morning. Garcia-Navarro does a commendable job reporting on factors besides the Surge™ that have decreased the slaughter in Baghdad, but that doesn't stop Wertheimer from opening with this salvo:

"...the impact of the troop Surge™. The last of the troop reinforcements left Iraq this summer and no one doubts that they helped improve security in Baghdad..."

That's odd, since Garcia-Navarro's report takes a brief look at several of those non-existent doubts. She interviews a Sunni who talks about the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods (confirmed in the NPR-ignored satellite report), the pre-Surge™ realignment of Sunni insurgents with the Americans (which Juan Cole over at Informed Comment has repeatedly credited to the Sunni realization that they had lost the sectarian war against the Shia), and the cease-fire of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army.

These factors all point to many doubts about US troops improving security in Baghdad - and Garcia-Navarro's report doesn't even cover some of the more disturbing aspects that are implied in her report. For example, in the (NPR-ignored) satellite study of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, the authors conclude that the Surge™ had no positive effect on security (unless you count the ethnic cleansing that the Surge™ accelerated). Garcia-Navarro's report also doesn't mention that the Mehdi army ceasefire was largely achieved by...Iran! And finally Garcia-Navarro doesn't even mention the city of walls that has "improved the security" of Baghdad's inmates.

And of course Wertheimer's "no one doubts" doesn't even consider the opinions of the Iraqis, and why should she when NPR can't even report on how many of them have died between "liberation" and the Surge.