What surge? In Baghdad, they just turned out the lights and left

To hear President Bush tell it, there is one reason, overall, that violence has fallen in Baghdad: The surge.

It was the surge, he said last week, that allowed the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. "Since we launched the surge last year, violence has fallen to its lowest point since the spring of 2004," he said in his radio address last Saturday. And just two days ago, he said of the surge: "The United States and the world is better off because of it."

Not so quick, according to a team of UCLA researchers.

Studying satellite imagery of night light in Baghdad neighborhoods dominated by Sunni residents, they came up with an alternative conclusion: The Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims had largely stopped killing each other by the time the "surge" of U.S. troops arrived in 2007.

In other words, the remaining Sunnis, defeated, turned out the lights and left. And then the U.S. troops came in.

The report, being published today, is "Baghdad Nights: Evaluating the US Military 'Surge' Using Nighttime Light Signatures."

Written by three members of UCLA's geography department and one political scientist, it states that "the overall night light signature of Baghdad" increased from 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, to 2006, and then declined dramatically from March 20, 2006 through Dec. 16, 2007.

The report notes:

The decrease in the night light signatures was not uniformly distributed across the city. The neighborhoods of East and West Rashid have experienced the greatest decline in night lights during the period of the surge. This pattern of declines appears associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing...

The professors found no similar decline in night light in four other large cities, Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala.

"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect," they wrote.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Garry]

I'm old enough to remember a time when it would have been unthinkable for a presidential aspirant to deliberately undermine the conduct of a military action abroad by the man he hoped to succeed in the White House.

In fact, I'm old enough to remember a time such an unthinkable action would be punishable by a treason charge.

Oh, how I long for the good old days.

Such actions are no longer unthinkable – and neither is there any threat of prosecution. And that's probably why Barack Obama will get away with this arrogant, despicable, un-American, treacherous act.

In case you missed it, the Obama campaign has issued an angry denial of a report by respected commentator Amir Taheri that claimed the presidential candidate had urged Iraqi officials not to accept any U.S. troop withdrawal plan until a new administration is sworn in next year.

However, in making the hysterical denial, Obama's spokeswoman, Wendy Morigi, confirmed the facts of Taheri's report. She said her boss told Iraqi leaders they should not rush through a "Strategic Framework Agreement" governing the future of U.S. troops until after President Bush leaves office.

Perhaps Obama sees a distinction between Taheri's report and what appears to be an official confirmation of it by his campaign. I don't think most impartial observers will.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama "asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the U.S. elections and the formation of a new administration."

If you have any doubts about the truth of what Zebari says, maybe you will accept Obama's own words, spoken to the New York Times last June 16. Here is his recollection, in the so-called "newspaper of record," of his meeting with Zebari: "My concern is that the Bush administration, in a weakened state politically, ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it's my administration or Senator McCain's administration. The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made."

What do we have here?

No. 1: We have a candidate who launched his campaign for the presidency saying he was the anti-war candidate. He was the one demanding our military forces come home immediately. In fact, just last year he told an audience at a university in Iowa: "The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops – not in six months or one year – now." What happened in the intervening six months to persuade Obama to use his political position to delay withdrawals of U.S. military personnel? How is it that the anti-war candidate became a diplomatic obstacle to pulling out our soldiers from a war already won? What does Code Pink think about this?

No. 2: Why would Obama want to delay the plan for withdrawal of troops from Iraq? Could it be what Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suspects – that Obama, as Taheri explains, "might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success"?

No. 3: Haven't laws clearly been violated here? If not, do we need to draft new legislation to ensure that politicians don't actively interfere in diplomatic affairs that can cost the lives of Americans and cause U.S. military personnel to serve overseas longer than necessary?

No. 4: Whatever happened to the old notion that American politics stopped at the water's edge? Is that a silly, quaint idea that died with the emergence of no-class, low-life presidents like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton?

I feel like prosecution is in order.

America needs to rediscover the treason laws.

It's time for this kind of treachery to be exposed and called what it is.

"Peacenik" Obama is playing with the lives of brave and precious U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

He'll say anything and do anything to achieve power – including put American lives at risk.

This man should be behind bars – not vying for the highest office in the land.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75605

[Another old guy]

I remember when our pres wouldn't start an unjust - illegal exercise, this is no war it's a waste of money. We won the war didn't you here!! Mission Accomplished!! said our leader, so it's really just a police action and we need to leave and let them police there own.

[Older Than You]

Garry,

You must be about 20 years old. I remember two instances in my lifetime where this actually DID happen. (See Nixon, R.-1968 Vietnam Peace Talks; or Reagan, R.-1980 Iranian Hostage Crisis.) Don’t seem to remember any treason charges there. How about blowing the cover on a CIA operative and their entire Middle East operation? Does that qualify as treason? How about lying a nation into war?

“Respected commentator Amir Taheri”? Respected by WHOM? You mean THIS Amir Taheri?

1) May 19, 2006, Taheri wrote a story for Canada’s NATIONAL POST about a new Iranian law requiring Iranian Jews and other religious minorities to wear colored badges at all times while on the streets of Tehran. This caused an immediate sensation and was picked up by many mainstream media sources and ran as a legitimate story. The bloggers went crazy with this story. But the story was simply NOT TRUE! Within hours the NATIONAL POST was alerted to the problem and had pulled the story from their website, blaming Taheri for misleading them.

2) In 1989, Taheri published a book about the rise and fall of the Shah of Iran entitled “NEST OF SPIES”. Larry Cohler-Esses wrote of the book in THE NATION, that it cited "nonexistent sources," it fabricated "nonexistent substance in cases where the sources existed," and distorted the facts "beyond recognition.” Other than that it was a really nice read.

3) In 2005, he said that Iran’s Ambassador to the UN had taken an active part in the takeover of the US embassy in Tehren in 1979. This too went all over the internet. It was however disproven by the Ambassador’s teacher! "This allegation is false," San Francisco State University professor Dwight Simpson wrote to the New York Post (which had published a Taheri column making the claim). "On November 4, 1979 [the day of the seizure], Javad Zarif was in San Francisco. He was then a graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University. He was my student, and he served also as my teaching assistant."

Your post is pathetic. I especially liked the link you provided to World Nut Daily.

[Rik TAngle]

Really Garry, as a U.S. history professor, I'm thinking about using your post as an example of muddled, non-analytical thinking for my students. It really makes no sense at all. Why would you jail the guy that's calling foul on an illegal "war?" I suppose the lies that got us into Iraq are fine by you. You are clearly ignorant about the concept of the loyal opposition. Without dissent as a principle of our political culture, we are doomed to dictatorship, which I think would be fine by you. Certainly, the National Socialists would not have allowed dissenting views. But, be careful what you wish for, Garry. If full-fledged Fascism comes to America, you will likely be locked up yourself for one or another sentiments that don't jibe with state dogma.

[Katherine Austin]

To Garry: Uh, excuse me? It seems to me that Mr. Obama's concerns are justified. Bush and Cheney fabricated evidence of WMD's in order to allow them to attack a sovereign nation when there was no imminent threat from that nation. This made the invasion of Iraq an illegal war according to international law. (Even influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded this fact in 2003.) Since when is it treason to challenge our leaders when they break the law?

Now they've apparently lied again, this time about the surge, which has led to the deaths of numerous "brave and precious U.S. military personnel".

This war has been a comedy of errors and malfeasance since day one. Given the chance to enlist the Iraqi people in the rebuilding of their own country, thereby winning allies for life (as in Japan and Germany after WWII), Cheney's former company Haliburton was instead sent in, and reaped vast profits. This, in turn, alienated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were left stranded, unemployed, unable to feed their families, and without useful work to keep them occupied. No wonder they were drawn to the extremists. Our country is now far less safe from the threat of terrorist attack than it was prior to the invasion, and we have far more enemies. (Not to mention the loss of $10 billion per month that the American people have paid to continue the war.)

Mr. Obama's grave and well-justified concern, in his role as a U.S. senator, has been that the proven incompetence of the Bush/Cheney machine will again result in an ill-conceived, poorly planned action that is doomed to fail, engineered to distract voters' attention from America's economic crisis and win votes. This is not a time to be establishing binding agreements that will profoundly affect the entire region and our own national security for years to come, simply for the sake of short-term political gain. (Also, there is a significant difference between Obama's cautious "should not rush" and Taheri's misquote of "do not accept".) I, too, want our soldiers to come home as soon as possible, but not at the risk of even greater violence, instability, and unintended consequences in the future.

It smacks of hypocrisy, cynicism, and disrespect for our troops that Bush has waited until now to bring them home, on the eve of the election. Isn't the timing of his assertion that we've suddenly "won", after five long years of failure, just the slightest bit suspect? He's told us many things over the past eight years that have proven to be lies. He's a nice guy, he may even have believed those lies, but is it wise to suddenly trust him now?

We can no longer afford to have American politics "stop at the water's edge". Like it or not, we are now part of a global community, and our own security depends upon our leaders' ability to navigate complex global challenges. I applaud Mr. Obama's rational and intelligent caution. If this be treason, call my lawyer and take me to the court martial.