Iraq War: More "progress" evaporates in our postmodern war

Remember how good the security situation was in Iraq for the January 30 elections?

The Foxists, of course, were busy painting the "purple revolution" (you know, ink on the fingers, purple ink - I'm losing track of the color-coded "revolutions", it's almost as confusing as the terror alerts) as another stunning triumph for the policies of Bush the Magnificent, Liberator of Peoples.  And it was supposedly a great moment for the Iraqi security forces that are always being quickly built up.

The careful and skeptical Juan Cole assessed the situation this way, assuming as other "reality-based" observers that the drastic security measures taken that day had reduced the number of insurgent attacks (A Mixed Story Informed Comment 01/30/05):

With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed "election." Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned. The measures were successful in cutting down on car bombings that could have done massive damage. But even these Draconian steps did not prevent widespread attacks, which is not actually good news. There is every reason to think that when the vehicle traffic starts up again, so will the guerrilla insurgency.

Well, it wasn't exactly like that.  Even Cole's cautious account turns out to have overestimated the effectiveness of the security measures that day.

Via The Next Hurrah via Daily Kos, I see this report from the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), which apparently has still not been taken over by Republican hacks, with a name like a doctoral dissertation:  Rebuilding Iraq: Preliminary Observation on Challenges in Transferring Security Repsonsibilities to Iraqi Military and Police, Statement of Joseph A. Christoff, Director of International Affairs and Trade prepared for a House Subcommittee hearing, 03/14/05 (*.pdf file).  Tucked in there on page 10 (p. 12 of 23 on the *.pdf file), in the section titled "Challenges to Transferring Security...", are these two sentences:

The DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] Director testified that attacks on Iraq’s election day reached about 300, double the previous 1 day high of about 150 during last year’s Ramadan. About 80 percent of all attacks occurred in Sunni-dominated central Iraq, with the Kurdish north and Shia south remaining relatively calm. (my emphasis)

Say what?  The number of attacks was twice as high as the previous all-time high for the Iraqi insurgency?  All that stuff about how successful the security measures were and how brilliantly the Iraqi security forces performed that day was about the day that saw the most attacks of any day during the insurgency?

It's looking like the definitive comment on this war is going to be the question of Harold Casey from Louisville, KY:  "I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth."

And one like this is likely to be symbolic of the Pentagon's crashed credibility with the American public, from Gen. Richard Myers commenting on the Iraq War 04/26/05:  "I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time."

And if we've been winning for over two years now, think how much better it will be in 2008 when we've been winning for over five years!

Meanwhile, we're getting reports like this: Experts: Iraq verges on civil war by Timothy Phelps Newsday 05/12/05.

"It's just political rhetoric to say we are not in a civil war. We've been in a civil war for a long time," said Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon.

Other experts said Iraq is on the verge of a full-scale civil war with civilians on both sides being slaughtered. Incidents in the past two weeks south of Baghdad, with apparently retaliatory killings of Sunni and Shia civilians, point in that direction, they say.

Also of concern were media accounts that hard-line Shia militia members are being deployed to police hard-line Sunni communities such as Ramadi, east of Baghdad, which specialists on Iraq said was a recipe for disaster.

Pat Lang's record on his analyses of the Iraq War so far have proven to be much better than those offered to the public by Rummy or Gen. Myers.

Or this one: Over There: Why U.S. troops won't be coming home from Iraq anytime soon
 by Fred Kaplan Slate 05/10/05.

Read together, the two documents—the latest quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, just released today, and the State Department's "Iraq Weekly Status Report" dated May 4—suggest that the Iraqi leaders have a long way to go (by some measures, as long as they've ever had) before they can rebuild their country, secure order, stabilize their regime, and protect their borders without a large American military presence.

The paradox that stumped the U.S. occupation forces two years ago, shortly after the fall of Baghdad, continues to stump them today. On the one hand, their efforts to provide security won't succeed until they restore essential services. On the other hand, they can't restore essential services until the country's key assets—especially its roads, oil pipelines, and electrical generators—are secure. (my emphasis)

Meanwhile, in a blog post that has understandably attracted quite a bit of attention in Left Blogostan, David Sirota catches the folks at ABC News' The Note saying why they can't be bothered to cover the Iraq War.  As Bob Somerby might say, gaze into the empty soul of your press corps.