"We're Winning in Iraq"

We've been hearing a lot lately that we are now "winning in Iraq," because the McCain campaign has declared it to be true. When asked for specifics, McCain supporters primarily say that "Violence is down." This is true. Instead of 4 deadly car bombings in Baghdad a week, there's closer to 2.

They also say that political reconciliation is going gangbusters. But what about that? Specifically, what reconciliation has there been? Answer: there's been some progress on provincial elections, but there are still issues to be resolved that have stalled the election. Significantly, there's been no agreement on Oil Revenue Sharing. There still isn't satisfactory electricity of water - even to the capital! Reconstruction projects remain as stalled as they ever have been. And most grievously, there still hasn't been that run-through of the constitution that the Sunnis were promised so that they would vote for the damned thing! Don't those things seem important?

As for the successes we've had, those are largely credited to our policy of paying our enemies not to fight us. That is known as arming your short-term friends, something that has come back to bite us before (see Iraq, Afghanistan). And you don't have to believe me on this, my favorite non-partisan research group, the GAO, said so.

This "We are Winning" garbage is the old Bush-party line! They've been telling us the same thing for years now! In fact, I could have said the same exact thing last summer. "We're making progress, and getting closer to being able to pull out, but it's not there yet." Well I say 4000+ dead and 2 trillion dollars and 7 years is enough of a commitment for America. Our combat troops have done their jobs with honor, and it's time to bring them home. It's time to start spending our treasure in our own country to get off Oil. Either that, or we can spend another 4 years being told that we're just 6-9 months from "turning the corner."

Also, by the way, violence is always down in the summer. It's hot as hell. You can't go jihading in the oven, gringo.