It's Gonna be the Best Surge Ever!

2007 monthly U.S. fatalities in Iraq surpass 2006 levels! Frank de Libero posts a chart showing that monthly GI deaths in 2007 are higher than in 2006. As Matthew Yglesias points out, "the 'surge' strategy specifically contemplated risking higher American death rates…in order to accomplish some larger political goals. Unfortunately, those goals weren't achieved so we just have more dead people." Think Progress

It's Gonna be the Best Surge Ever! Part II

 

The White House is determined to get another $50 billion for the surge in Iraq, and is willing to use as much anecdotal evidence and unsupported statistics as it takes to get it! The surge is working so well that sectarian attacks in Iraq have nearly doubled in the past year!

Luckily Gen. David Petraeus has been able to get the recent intelligence assessment of Iraq toned down:



The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said. CBS News

With a little luck, and a heaping helping of creative rhetoric and Petraeus can convince congress and the American public that it will be $50 billion well spent!

[...] [Petraeus has] obviously been treating the September report like a military operation, trying to generate as much good press and congressional change of heart as he possibly can in the weeks leading up to 9/11. I now expect him to provide just the opposite of what I thought before: a consistently upbeat report studded with just enough accomodations to reality to keep him from seeming completely ridiculous. CBS News

 

It's Gonna be the Best Surge Ever!

 

Is the glass half empty, or half full? Maybe it depends on whom you ask that question. Compare and contrast these two items...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 175 people were killed when three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers attacked residential compounds home to the ancient minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq on Tuesday, an Iraqi army captain said.

Captain Mohammad al-Jaad said at least another 200 people were wounded in the bombings in the Kahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair areas near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, close to the Syrian border.

The mayor of Sinjar, Dakheel Qassim Hasoun, gave the same casualty figures and said U.S. aircraft were helping to ferry the wounded to hospitals. reuters, via Think Progress

Halliburton Second-Quarter Profit Soars on KBR Gain
July 23 (Bloomberg) -- Halliburton Co., the world's second- largest oilfield contractor, said second-quarter net income more than doubled on a gain from selling its government services and construction subsidiary, KBR Inc.

Profit climbed to $1.53 billion, or $1.62 a share, from $591 million, or 55 cents, a year earlier, the Houston-based company said today in a statement. Excluding the $933 million gain on the KBR sale and a $49 million gain on the sale of an investment, the company earned 60 cents a share, up from 47 cents in the 2006 quarter. Revenue rose 20 percent to $3.74 billion.

Halliburton's growth in overseas business helped push earnings past expectations, said Dan Pickering, an analyst at Pickering Energy Partners in Houston. The company was expected to earn 56 cents excluding the gains, the average of 21 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. bloomberg.com

Images via Mock, Paper, Scissors and Jess Wundrun