[Cyrus]

The extent of reality denial in which the war's supporters can engage is indeed astonishing!

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*GDP in Iraq has been growing 10% per year despite the oil production being lower than pre-war levels.

[/ QUOTE ]This is another way of saying "The United States' invasion knocked the GDP of Iraq to its lowest level in decades but it is growing back from that abyss by 10% per year". That's right, we are not impressed.

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*14 of the 18 provinces of Iraq are peaceful.

[/ QUOTE ] Care to re-calculate this in terms of population, please, instead of geographical areas? This is not about the Electoral College in US presidential elections.

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*We are finnaly getting some Iraqi units which will stand up to the insurgents instead of running away.

[/ QUOTE ] Bush recently claimed some nonsense about a hundred or more Iraqi battalions being battle-ready. I put a poll to the 2+2 readership and, wisely, the majority of respondents chose not to believe the president. They thought he was exaggerating, even though they did not know the real number themselves!

Want more about Dubya's credibility? Here's what Bush said on Nov. 4, 2004: "We are making good progress in training the Iraqi troops." That day, he predicted that "125,000 soldiers" would be trained by January 2005. So either the number of trained soldiers has decreased over the last year, or the administration has changed its definition of training!

Solid measurements of progress have also proved to be (let's say) elusive. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img] In February 2004, Rumsfeld said that "there are over 210,000 Iraqis serving in the security forces." But in late 2005, Gen. George Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, told Congress that the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting independently of U.S. troops had dropped from three to one, and that only about 700 Iraqi soldiers were fully capable of fighting without any U.S. logistical support - a statistic that Rumsfeld now dismisses as "a red herring."

Another howler : In early December, 2005, in a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush said some 45 Iraqi battalions —each with 750 men— are able to lead combat operations on their own. That means some 33,000 men. But a week earlier, on CNN, Gen. Dempsey, who runs the training effort, stated that about 23,000 Iraqis are battle-ready. That number only accounts for 30 battalions. Either 15 extra battalions graduated during Thanksgiving week, or there are different standards implied by Dempsey and Bush. Take your pick.

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*The insurgents have been alienating the Iraqi population more than winning them over.

[/ QUOTE ] This is patently false. The insurgents are getting more organised, co-ordinated and bold in their actions. This shows that, if anything, their logistics must be improving. Also, their numbers. Both can only be the result of expanding support for the insurgency among Iraqis.

Is time on the insurgents' side or on the American side? Ask yourselves that. (A li'l tip: Which side is under an implicit timeline to giddy-up an' vamoose?)