Former General David L Grange said on CNN that 85% of all attacks in Iraq are against US troops

[NNN0LHI]

This was a little earlier this morning. Said he had been privy to some inside information about this. This sure doesn't sound like a civil war to me.

I will post a link to the transcript when it is posted.

Don

[karynnj]

1. That is likely why he said it

The administration wants to reject the idea that Iraq is in a civil war.

There may also be a difference in what you are counting. If antyone shoots at an American, it is likely counted as an attack against the US. I doubt there is a similar ability to count unsuccessful attacks on Iraqis in general - in a time of chaos, I doubt even the Shiite call the mostly Shiite police to report these attacks in Baghdad. It also doesn't count the magnitude of the attack - so the awful coordinated car bombing likely counted as "1". It also is a function of the fact that we have placed our soldiers in the middle of the civil war - and they are getting hit by everyone -which is not something to celebrate.

That statistic does bring up another question though - who is making those attacks? The Iraqis, we are there to "help" or foreign Al Qaeda fighters - that even the army has admitted form a small single digit % of all the people the US has captured who are fighting us. It could be that the polls over the last several years that the majority of Iraqis want us out are right.

[NNN0LHI]

2. foreign Al Qaeda fighters? That is a joke isn't it?

http://www.startribune.com/commentary/story/1395487.html

800 - Approximate number of fighters currently held in U.S. detention camps in Iraq who are minors.

130 - In July, number of fighters held in U.S. detention camps in Iraq who were non-Iraqis.

[karynnj]

6. Yep - that was why I said they were, by the military's own accounting

only a single digit %. (At different times they have said different %, some as low as 2%)

I'm making the same point as you - though obviously not well. My point was there is no well defined enemy. It is not a Baathist insurgent movement (one Bush defined enemy) or Al Qaeda. It is not even a war - it is an occupation.

Either the attacks on us are mostly:
- Various Iraqi factions hitting us, because they want us out.
Or
- Attacks because we are in the middle of a Civil War.

If it's an occupation, how does a temporay surge help? Particularly if the Iraqi factions are not moving to reconcile their differences, but the hostility is increasing because they are killing each other.

[The Magistrate]

3. At Minimum, Sir, There Is Definitional Juggling Going On Here

A rocket grenade lofted ineffectually towards a transport is an 'attack' on U.S. forces: a bomb set off to wide and murderous effect in a crowded market square is 'an attack' on Iraqis. The things are far from equal weight, though each notches the tally up one in the respective columns....

[bigtree]

4. the same troops who are the primary defenders, representatives, and hammer

of the Maliki regime, fighting on one side of a multi-fronted civil war.

[Poiuyt]

5. CNN's Michael Ware on civil war in Iraq

KATHLEEN KOCH: And Michael, the Iraqi government and the U.S. military in Baghdad keep saying this is not a civil war. What are you seeing?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, firstly, let me say, perhaps it's easier to deny that this is a civil war, when essentially you live in the most heavily fortified place in the country within the Green Zone, which is true of both the prime minister, the national security adviser for Iraq and, of course, the top U.S. military commanders. However, for the people living on the streets, for Iraqis in their homes, if this is not civil war, or a form of it, then they do not want to see what one really looks like.

This is what we're talking about. We're talking about Sunni neighborhoods shelling Shia neighborhoods, and Shia neighborhoods shelling back.

We're having Sunni communities dig fighting positions to protect their streets. We're seeing Sunni extremists plunging car bombs into heavily-populated Shia marketplaces. We're seeing institutionalized Shia death squads in legitimate police and national police commando uniforms going in, systematically, to Sunni homes in the middle of the night and dragging them out, never to be seen again.

I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/11/26/blinded-by-the-st-mccainholy-joe-war/

FOREMAN: So that speaks to the notion we started this show with, that some people believe that we're already in the early stages of a civil war and that's part of what's happening in Diyala.

WARE: We have to be kidding if we think at this stage that we can still be debating whether there's a civil war or not. I mean, that's beyond the pale now. I mean, on any textbook definition or political scientist definition of civil war, you have that, right now, here in this country, now, maybe boiling away at a certain temperature, bubbling to a certain degree. The real point is once you draw down U.S. forces below say 100,000 or 75,000, that's simply enough troops just to protect the Americans themselves. The civil war will erupt of its own accord in and around these troops. There it will reach a boiling point where it will bubble over the top of the pot. There is a civil war now. And the building blocks are well and truly in place for a much more Lebanon-style civil war once U.S. forces draw down, be it this year or next.

==

General William Odom:

ODOM: I find that totally incredible. I put it almost in the category of too ridiculous to refute. We're sitting on a civil war. We're not even framing the structure of the fight out there properly. This is a civil war going on now. We're kind of participating on one side and then the other. And to get out and let it come to its logical conclusion and one side win, you're going to have violence. We started this by knocking off Saddam, who kept order. Once you knocked him off, this was in the cards. There was no way to prevent it.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/19/tww.01.html

[NNN0LHI]

9. Video: Ware says pullout would be “giving Iraq to Iran … and al Qaeda”

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/26/video-ware-says-pullout-would-be-giving-iraq-to-iran-and-al-qaeda/

CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware and anchor Kyra Phillips joined Kiran Chetry on American Morning to discuss their recent trip to Iraq. Towards the end, Chetry wondered if America pulling out of Iraq would “help the situation.” Neither Ware nor Phillips appear to think anything of that idea, with Ware saying pulling out would hand “Iraq to Iran…and al Qaeda.”

Will liberal bloggers who constantly swoon over Ware post about this?

Transcript:

KYRA PHILLIPS: It would be a disaster. I mean, I had a chance to sit down with the Minister of Defense, to General Petraeus, to Admiral Fallon, head of CENTCOM. I asked them all the question whether Iraqi or U.S. military — there is no way U.S. troops could pull out. It would be a disaster. They’re doing too much training, they’re helping the Iraqis not only with security, but trying to get the government up and running. I mean, this is a country of ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ there’s so much corruption still. If the U.S. military left — they have rules of engagement, they have an idea, a focus. It would be a disaster.

MICHAEL WARE: Well, even more than that, if you just wanted to look at it purely in terms of American national interest, if U.S. troops leave now, you’re giving Iraq to Iran, a member of President Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil,’ and al Qaeda. That’s who will own it. And so, coming back now, I’m struck by the nature of the debate on Capitol Hill, how delusional it is. Whether you’re for this war, or against it; whether you’ve supported the way it’s been executed, or not; it doesn’t matter. You’ve broke it, you’ve got to fix it now. You can’t leave, or it’s going to come and blow back on America.

[enki23]

7. as if there were any serious attempt at counting all the attacks on civilians

amazingly, the vast majority of counted attacks are attacks in the immediate vicinity of the attack counters.

[coco77]

8. Grange is another mouthpiece...

I've been watching him ever since the occupation started, no matter what he will always say everything is going good.