19 American troops lost their lives in May, 2008, but four of them died from non-hostile causes.
480 Iraqi civilians and security forces were killed as well. But this is the first month that these fatalities dropped below 500, and only in October, November and December, 2007 were these casulties below 600/month.
If this trend continues, it will be hard to hide even though some will try.
5 comments:
If Obama wins the election, he will not withdraw troops like he says. He will say that he's going to "clean things up" and try to take credit for what happened before him. The story line will be how Bush screwed up, but it took Obama to make Iraq safe for democracy. If the MSM can keep the successes off the front page long enough, they can give Obama the laurels.
If June and July go as well, though, it will be tough to keep it quiet with McCain on the campaign trail. They will have to censor his speeches. Not that they won't try it.
The operations to clean up Basra and Sadr City caught me by surprise, I thought they would jump off sometime in mid or late summer, but it looks like Maliki was a better judge of the strength of his enemies than I was.
It all reminds me of what happens in a computer game, The Battle of Wesnoth, that I've been playing on and off. Things will be all tied up, the enemy will send seemingly endless waves of troops against my line, then suddenly the battle starts to turn, the enemy troops break up and become isolated, and it's all over. It's almost like a phase transition. So I've come around to admitting that there is something to be learned from computer games.
Barry,
That's an interesting thought. It could be a winning strategy for Obama if he gets in and is willing to throw the withdraw now crowd under the limo. He is certainly getting a lot of practice with that particular move. In any case, I would expect a concerted effort to take credit for all that Bush has accomplished and to discredit the man. Will it work? We'll see.
Chuck
Wait until the Oprah goes to Iraq week long special in April 2009 :>)
That will certainly be the party line should BHO win. But I have a hope (at least) that he might not have the "necessaries" to win.
He has been beating the race thing like the proverbial rented mule. That mule is getting awfully tired. Trinity United CC is now under the Obama bus as a result of Pleger. But there are some awfully peeved Hillary supporters, and countless victims of reverse discrimination, political correctness and the like that will probably not let their real thoughts be known until they get in the voting booth.
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