When Did The Surge In Iraq Start?
Posted on Thu Jul 19, 2007 at 02:35:00 PM EST
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With General Petraeus set to discuss the surge strategy in Iraq, it is interesting to see how the start of the surge has been, erm pushed back. In an interview yesterday with Hugh Hewitt, Gen. Petraeus said:
we have been surging our forces during that time [since he was named Commander on February 10]. We have added five Army brigade combat teams, two Marine battalions, and a Marine expeditionary unit, and some enablers, as they’re called. And over the last month, that surge of forces has turned into a surge of offensive operations. . . .
This would establish mid-February as the start of the Surge. This is confirmed in this news report, based on a June 15, 2007 Pentagon report to Congress:
The security operation was launched Feb. 14 and is still unfolding as the last of an additional 28,000 or so U.S. forces are getting into position in and around the Iraqi capital. The Pentagon is required by Congress to provide its initial assessment of the operation in July, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said he will report in September.
(Emphasis supplied.) So I think it is fair to say the Surge commenced in mid-February and became fully equipped and staffed by June. The question is do the results from February to June count? WaPo's Bob Kagan, of the Surging Kagan family, (h/t atrios), said yes in March:
The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.
. . . No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?
Four months have passed since Kagan delivered an assessment of the success of the Surge. Surely it is possible to further assess its success? And surely two months from now an even more comprehensive assessment is possible.
But as Atrios reports, the new line is:
"Just Last Month Since The Surge Began" CNN, repeating [General] Odierno's words . . .
And Petraeus is saying:
we will have a sense by that time of basically, of how things are going, have we been able to achieve progress on the ground, where have their been shortfalls, and so forth. And I think that is a reasonable amount of time to have had all the forces on the ground, again, for about three months, to have that kind of sense. . . .
Why just a sense? I think it is fair to deduce that Petraeus is anticipating an inability to forthrightly report success in any meaningful fashion. Indeed, he knows how he is doing now. And I think he has a fair idea of how he will be doing two months from now. His unwillingness to make Kagan-like pronouncements now or in September speaks to his unwillingess to flat out lie.
But to be sure, what Petraeus is likely to deliver is not going to be a "forthright assessment." Petraeus' unwillingness to provide a real assessment of the Surge in September lets you know that he can not and serve the purposes of his report - to buy more Friedman Units for this strategy.
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