If you have been listening to the recent reports from Baghdad by those who are clearly obsessed about “victory” in Iraq, you will get the impression that things are improving. The spin on the news has been pathetically obvious to me but to millions of Americans who don’t dig deeper, Bush may be able to convince them that all is not lost. But what is really going on? What is the real truth of our successes in Iraq? There are certain key things happening in Iraq that Bush doesn’t want the American people to know because it paints a truly disastrous picture of where we are and where we will end up if we continue to stay the course. For a closer look under the covers, read on…

From a very well written article from alternet.org, the truth in Iraq is grim and it all begins with the benchmarks. If you were to closely examine the recent report by Bush on the Congressional benchmarks, you will find that of 14 of the benchmarks, 8 were graded “satisfactory” and 6 were graded “unsatisfactory” and an additional 4 with “mixed” reviews. All in all, you would say that this would be a “passable” assessment worthy of additional time perhaps. But, in reality, this is an atrociously fraudulent assessment because the six failures are on critical issues necessary to the survival of Iraq while the 8 successes are on largely trivial matters.

What’s worse about these benchmarks is that they don’t really represent the Surge goals as laid out by Bush in his January speech in which he outlined his “change” in strategy for the Surge. Here is what he said:

Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs.

So, how well have we done in accomplishing these goals as Bush set out in the beginning? If you look at the Surge strategy, we were to accomplish these goals through two major initiatives. One was that the U.S. was to adopt a more aggressive strategy for reducing violence in Baghdad neighborhoods considered strongholds for the Sunni insurgency. The second initiative involved subduing the Mahdi army who is known to be to blamed for the bulk of death-squad murders in and around the capital.

What is laughable is that Bush keeps touting the fact that the Surge hasn’t really begun until July, but in truth, results were expected by July. This was when, as reported in the New York Times by a senior American military officer, that by July we would be in a position to refocus attention on “restoring services and rebuilding the neighborhoods.” Funny how quickly the Administration forgets its own timelines for success. How many promises has Bush failed to deliver on? I can’t even count them anymore.

But I digress, let’s get back to our two initiatives. What, in effect, has happened is that as we decided to take on the Mahdi army in Sadr City, they went into hiding which took away the only source of security in the neighborhood. Now suicide bombers are back big time since our soldiers have forced their only source of protection underground. Now citizens of these neighborhoods are blaming the occupation for their worsened fate. And what’s worse is that since we look at all Iraqis as potential insurgents or militia, we can only move through the neighborhoods with “force” without eliciting cooperation from citizens. So, we kick down doors and brutally interrogate and terrorize families further alienating the population. Had we worked in alliance with the Mahdi army in producing patrol “density” that would have effectively eliminated further violence by the Sunni insurgency, we could have made progress.

But, of course, this has a down side as well as has proven to be true in al Anbar province where we have joined forces with the Sunni forces in overcoming al Qaeda. But that has proven to be a double-edged sword. In fact, Maliki is now threatening to kick Petraeus out of Iraq because he is arming the very militias that threaten the Iraqi unity government. The funny thing about this is that the Sunnis hate us, but they just hate us less than al Qaeda. It’s that old saying…”the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” So, once al Qaeda has been thrown out of al Anbar, whose to say the Sunnis won’t turn their American provided weapons back on us and the Iraqi government? And, worsening the situation is that as al Qaeda is being driven out of al Anbar, they are flooding other areas driving up the violence.

Folks, this is exactly why our government should have never become involved in a civil war. As in any civil war, being in the middle means there is no clear victory because there is no clear enemy. And for all those who keep espousing “progress” in Iraq, they are delusional if they think that they can achieve a military victory. It’s impossible.

What’s even more ironic is that we came there to protect the Iraqi citizens and we can’t even protect ourselves. As reported in the New York Times, the highly fortified “Green Zone” in the very heart of Baghdad which was specifically designed to be a safe haven for American and Iraqi officials, has become a regular target for increasingly destructive mortar and rocket attacks launched from unpacified neighborhoods (you know, the ones we were supposed to have subdued). From the New York Times reporters, Alissa J. Rubin and Stephen Farrel, the Green Zone has been “attacked almost daily for weeks.”

All I can say, is don’t be deceived again by Bush and Co. who will never admit their mistake in the first place and will certainly never leave Iraq. We need to keep the pressure up on this administration and Congress to make sure we don’t continue to compound our problems in Iraq and around the world. Read as much as you can on this subject and be informed because if you aren’t, you are a pawn of the continual spin dished out by the White House.

We need to end our occupation of a country in a civil war, engage our friends and enemies in the region and begin the process of diplomatic negotiation. We aren’t the only ones concerned with the stability of the region and it shouldn’t be totally up to the U.S. to bring order to the Middle East. We can’t do it alone and we certainly can’t do it militarily. What we must do is to admit that we need help.