"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05
"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
This from the Associated Press: Webster: Insurgents badly hurt, but probably not broken yet by Robert Burns Army Times 07/08/05.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have “mostly eliminated” the ability of insurgents to conduct sustained, high-intensity attacks in Baghdad, the top U.S. commander in the Iraqi capital said Friday.
Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr. said in a video-teleconference interview from Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon that offensive operations by U.S. and Iraqi troops in recent weeks had sharply reduced the number of insurgent bombings. But he cautioned against concluding that the insurgency has been broken. ...
There were 14 to 21 car bombings per week in Baghdad before the May 22 start of the U.S. portion of the latest offensive, dubbed Operation Lightning, he said. That has dropped to about seven or eight a week now, Webster said, attributing the improvement to the disruption of insurgent cells and the availability of more and better intelligence.
... “I do believe, however, that the ability of these insurgents to conduct sustained, high-intensity operations as they did last year, we’ve mostly eliminated that.” He said that about 1,700 suspected insurgents had been captured during Operation Lightning, including 51 foreigners. ...
On the other hand, he predicted that, “in the next couple of months we will not see sustained, long bloody months in Baghdad.” ...
By October, when Iraqis are scheduled to vote on a new constitution, there should be a full division of Iraqi army soldiers, numbering about 18,000, sufficiently trained to take the lead in securing the Iraqi capital, he said.
How are his predictions working out so far? Bomber hits Iraqi army recruiting center (AP) St. Petersburg Times 07/10/05.
A suicide bomber blew himself up Sunday at an Iraqi army recruiting center in the capital, witnesses said. Early casualty reports varied, with a hospital official saying at least 14 died and a Defense Ministry employee reporting up to 25 killed.
The blast occurred just before 9 a.m. at a western Baghdad recruiting center that had been hit several times before by suicide attackers.
Violence Leaves 45 Dead in Iraq by Andy Mosher and Naseer Nouri Washington Post 07/11/05
At least 45 people were killed Sunday in violence in Iraq, including 29 in two attacks in the capital: a suicide bombing at a military recruiting center and a massacre of a sleeping family in a residential neighborhood.
The Baghdad bombing occurred just before 9 a.m. at Muthanna airport, a former government airstrip near the city center that has been converted into a facility for processing army recruits. According to witnesses and police, a bomber detonated an explosive belt near a crowd of men waiting to enter the recruiting center.
According to the Defense Ministry, the explosion killed 21 people and wounded at least 34 others, which would make it the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since June 19, when a suicide bomber killed 23 people in a restaurant popular with Iraqi policemen. Medical workers quoted by news services put the death toll in Sunday's attack between 16 and 25 people.
Why do Pentagon spokespeople do this to themselves? Do they just imagine that in a day or two, no one will remember what they said? And a lot of them will complain that their credibility problems are due to The Media. Not reporting the good news and stuff, that is.
1 comment:
Yes, it's all the media's fault. As Jon Stewart said, "You never hear about all the cars that don't blow up."
Post a Comment