Reality is run buy a Bush hating peacemonger.

and it will take a tremendous mount of time and energy to disprove it even though his exagerations are based on truth stretched and outright falsehoods. Bush has made his living doing exactly this over the past seven years. It works. Americans don't do nuance well. 9/11 works way better than the perponderance of actual facts when the ruling side spews theiry own reality of this awful war. Lastly, given the minuscule attention span of the American electorate, this cynical strategy works in Bushit 's favor every time. The Dems, and us by association, are doomed when this unlevel playing field is utilized...

Your statement, " ... if we compare August 2007 not to the 'height of the sectarian violence in December' but to, say, August 2006, the AP shows that the death rate for Iraqi civilians has actually increased by something like 100 percent" is soooo misleading.

Are we sure that the 100% increase is in sectarian violence?

Seems to me that some big honkin' superpower put a whole lot of additional combat troops on the ground - maybe the 100% increase includes Iraqi civilians killed in the effort to give them time to reflect.

This is a month to month comparison of civilian and military deaths (last year with this year.)

Month-Year coalition forces/Iraqi security forces and civilan deaths.

2-2006 58/846

2-2007 85/3014

3-2006 33/1092

3-2007 82/2977

4-2006 82/1009

4-2007 117/1821

5-2006 79/1119

5-2007 131/1980

6-2006 63/870

6-2007 108/1345

7-2006 46/1280

7-2007 88/1690

8-2006 66/2966

8-2007 88/1674

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Total civilian deaths in Iraq feb. 2006 - aug. 2006: 9,182

Total civilian deaths in Iraq feb. 2007 - aug. 2007: 14,501

58% increase.

**************

Total military deaths feb.2006 - aug. 2006: 427

Total military deaths feb.2007 - aug. 2007: 699

63% increase.

**************

Total deaths feb 2006-aug 2006: 9609

Total deaths feb 2007-aug 2007: 15200

58% increase.

General Petraeus rebutted charges that he was merely doing the White House’s bidding. “I wrote this testimony myself,” he said. “It has not been cleared by nor shared with anyone in the Pentagon, the White House or the Congress.”

Given everything that was said, as I remember BY the White House and the Pentagon, shouldn't this claim be investigated?

Wow. Castor just blasted Petraeus with a good question on overall prospects for Iraqis assuming control of security. I'd like to trade in my very useless Rep. Cliff Stearns for this one. He has only distinguished himself by signing onto the effort to discredit Sesame Street a few years ago.

Having watched Petraeus all day, I can only remember how General Westmorland was cast in the same role during the Viet Nam fiasco. Westmorland measured ''success'' by numbers and statistics designed to make Johnson, Nixon, and the macavaleian

Kissinger ''look good."

Four star generals don't make ''five stars'' by making the duty and honor to their Commander-In-Chief look stupid. Even to become appointed to the task, Petreaues had to be the right politican to clean Bush's shoes until they looked "shinned."

What Westmorland failed to grasp, as also is the case of General Petraeus is crunching numbers to look good causes one to ''fail to see the forest for the trees." We could never have won in Viet Nam....it was a civil war. We shall never win in Iraq militarily..it is a civil war. Bring our troops home as reasonably as fast as we can. Kissinger persuaded Nixon to let some 10,000 more of our young people die while we slowly disengaged where it would not look like ''defeat.'' What a tradegy that is only repeating itself. Kissinger, the silent shadow behind our shadow government with Cheney, still refuses to see that the "Kissinger Doctrine" is a doctrine of a man drunk on the madness of power. General Petreaus is only caught in the middle of a political-oil strategm policy that is doomed to failure.

I would only add one thing - 9/11 was the greatest gift that anyone, much less an adversary, could have given to conservatists in this country.

With the Soviet Union having folded, and China eluding characterization as an enemy, conservatists desperately needed a bugaboo to justify defense spending and the generation of massive deficit and debt to use, in turn, to justify attacks on surviving social programs in the Federal government.

Four planes, 2,800 dead New Yorkers and a couple hundred other grieving families later, the conservatists had a bugaboo they've been running for all it was worth for the last six years.

It's better killing weather in December, in Iraq. In August, it gets upwards of 110 degrees.

And we're aware how strangely they're massaging the "sectarian violence" statistics, yes? Shot in the back of the head: sectarian killing. Shot in the front of the head: garden-variety crime, not counted. Add to that that they don't count it as "sectarian" when Shii kills Shii or Sunni kills Sunni. And when hundreds of Yazidis were killed in a horrific coordinated bomb attack on their villages in the Kurdish north last month, I have NO idea how they counted that. The Yazidis are an utterly different, ancient religion and culture with a few Islamic ideas admixed, and Muslims have always considered them heretics.

Apparently we're not going to get any data bearing meaningful analysis from these people. It's depressing, when so much is at stake, that reality is treated as a game board to be manipulated for the best political position.