Progress In Anbar Initiated Four Months Before Bush’s Escalation

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/09/anbar-surge/

Progress In Anbar Initiated Four Months Before Bush’s Escalation

The Bush administration is increasingly touting the reduced violence in the Anbar province as evidence that the President’s escalation policies are working. Last week, President Bush made a surprise visit to the region and used it to argue that the troop buildup should not be cut short:

In Anbar you’re seeing firsthand the dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure. … You see Sunnis who once fought side by side with al-Qaida against coalition troops now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al-Qaida.

But as the Washington Post outlines today, the escalation has nothing to do with Anbar’s success. The Sunnis in the region had developed a bottom-up plan to start fighting the al Qaeda insurgents in 2006, at least four months before Bush announced his escalation:

More striking was the emerging shift in Anbar; al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents had grown so dominant in the western province that military intelligence had all but given up on the area months earlier. Bush benefited from good timing. As he introduced his new strategy, Marine commanders had already made common cause with local Sunni tribal leaders who had broken with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, also called AQI. (…)

The sheik who forged the alliance with the Americans, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, traced the decision to fight al-Qaeda to Sept. 14, 2006, long before the new Bush strategy, but the president’s plan dispatched another 4,000 U.S. troops to Anbar to exploit the situation. As security improved, the White House eagerly took credit.

Even Gen. Petraeus has acknowledged that Anbar “was the result, not of military actions, certainly, alone. It was the result of, really, a political shift where the population led by the sheiks of major tribes decided to reject al Qaeda and its Taliban-like ideology, and the extremist behavior that they have come to associate with it.” Similarly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently admitted that the successes in Anbar were initiated by Iraqis, not U.S. troops.

Last week, CNN correspondent Michael Ware also noted that the Sunni insurgency in Anbar offered to work with U.S. troops — but not the Iraqi government — to fight al Qaeda in 2003, but the United States rejected the offer. Only “after four years of bloodshed” was the United States “finally ready to accept those terms.”

[NMDemDist2]

1. well color me shocked! The Bush admin lied again

:wow:

:sarcasm:

:rofl:

[babylonsister]

2. I know; it's almost like we now expect anything but the truth from this bunch. nt

[Flabbergasted]

5. No, he merely misrepresented the truth.

[OHdem10]

3. Thank you, for posting this. I had remembered seeing

people coming back from Iraq and discussing this long before
the Surge began. I could not find anything to prove my point.

Then all of a sudden these same people are acting as if the
Ambar is the direct result of the Surge.

Thank you. I am sure there are many Americans like myself
who saw these same reports and question tha same as I have.

[necso]

4. "Red on red"

("hostile" against "hostile") violence of this sort (Sunni tribes (clans, etc) against extremists/outsiders trying to tell them, the traditional local powers, what to do) -- has been reported (and perhaps "reported") for some time. (Or so goes the storyline; although it's consistent with the cultural, physical context and the historical dynamic.)

I remember several threads from well before the surge was even nightmared of.

But any signs of "progress" (real, imagined, made-up) can be expected to be conflated/confused with the escalation.

Because that's what's being sold.

(Although this "surge" (escalation) is only the tip of the iceberg: commander cero is determined to dump this mess on the next administration, and if he can do so with greater troops levels (in Iraq) than in 2006 -- thumbing his nose at the will of the American people -- then I imagine that this is only more to his pleasure.)