Juan Cole Destroys McCain's Falsehoods About the "Surge"

Juan Cole, who has forgotten more about the Middle East than John McCain or his toadying supporters in the corporate media have ever learned (especially the infuriating, shameless Andrea Mitchell, otherwise known as Mrs. Alan Greenspan) demolishes one of McCain's "best" arguments right here--namely, that the "Surge" in Iraq (a euphemism for escalation) has been a rousing success. The following excerpts are particularly noteworthy:

Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.

That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.

The troop escalation, which actually allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the country, has largely been pushed as propaganda by the White House and the AEI.

As they say in the Blog Biz, Read the Whole Thing. You will be enlightened.

And you won't fall for McCain's BS. Or Andrea Mitchell's for that matter.