You must think Iraq is a perfect world if you think you can break down only one door out of a hundred and find a nest of insurgents. How many doors will be busted in on false information, only to reveal women and children cowering in the dark? Do you really think it does not happen?
By the way, I do have a better idea. Bring 'em home.
…after two years of denying they tracked civilian deaths and injuries, yes.
They may be tracking civilian deaths, but they are not being used as a metric for success, as cited by the plan for victory. If the casualty rate had gone from 220/week to 440/week as it has in Iraq, do you not consider that a disturbing trend? Can you recall what happened a year ago? Operation Phantom Fury, or the second invasion of Fallujah. So since Fury, the operation designed to break the back of the insurgency, civilian deaths and injuries have doubled. Coincidence? How many people joined the insurgency as revenge for Fallujah? What the Plan for Victory shows is that these thoughts don’t even come into consideration. According to the Plan, insurgents are either Rejectionists, Saddamists, or Terrorists. Anyone who falls outside of this category is deemed to be able to be handled by Iraqi Forces. The increase in casualty death rate in indictive of something, but I’ll be dammed if I could find out the reasons from the “Plan for Victory” or any other US government source.
Do you consider that a statement of rhetoric belongs in your America’s Official Plan for Victory in Iraq? Body counts aren’t used as metrics in the official plan. The reason given is a purely political one, not a logical or a statistical one. As you said, its “rhetoric”, but it also happens to be rhetoric where the success or failure of the Iraq mission hinges on.
I wasn’t aware I needed to be in the intelligence field in order to comment on US Government policy.
Thats very nice.
Perhaps your friend could explain why coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross Report claimed some 70 percent to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested "by mistake.
At its peak, there were about 35 thousand detainees held by US authorities for extended periods of time. How much intelligence “noise” do you think is generated from 28 thousand “accidentally detained” people? From the 2004 Human Rights Watch Report:
…can you show me where in the plan car-bomb production capacity is used as a metric? As you cited: the number of car bombs intercepted and defused is the measure being used. Unless there is a secret plan out there we don’t know about, the production capacity is not being used as a metric. So if this week there are 20 bombs going off, but we intercept 10, and next week 50 bombs go off and 15 are intercepted, things have improved by the designated metrics. The metrics are designed to show improvement, regardless of what is happening on the ground They do not show a true picture, regardless of whatever ad-hoc rationalization you can come up with.
Bullshit. It tells us nothing. If it does anything, it makes us feel better-and that is what this metric is designed to do. Pure absolute one-hundred percent bullshit propaganda.
More bullshit. Death tolls do not alway rise. And when they double in the space of a year, they are telling us something.
I’m sorry, I can’t really see anything funny about Iraqi dead: especially considering that we don’t know how many there are. So, using official government sources, can you tell me how many civilains have died since the invasion? How many at the hands of the insurgents? How many have coalition forces killed? How many Iraqi soldiers died in the invasion?
Thats the biggest laugh I’ve had all day.
As I stated before, I don’t have a lot of time on these boards, and I do not have time to pour over the economic and political metrics. I will point out for starters, however, that reconstruction money is starting to run out.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-10-09-iraq-rebuilding-cover_x.htm?csp=N009
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1101/dailyUpdate.html
For more on the Iraq economy, read this very good article.
…glimmer of hope? The Plan for Victory “articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003”… so, for all intensive purposes, is nothing new. The Iraq we have at the moment is a direct result of this strategy. There is nothing new: what has changed prior to the publication of the document to post-publication? The Plan is a dangerous document: because it sets metrics which encourage the “Detention Industry”, and delivers a false impression on the true state of affairs in Iraq. It is a policy statement: not a plan. Its just another shell-game being played by the Bush Administration, and surprise! People are falling for it again…
…go figure. You’ve figured the whole thing out.
You see…as much as denial can hurt-thousands of Iraqi’s were detained without good reason. (Citations above.) And the population, apparently, hates us. You’ve solved the puzzle! Now, do you think that if part of the Plan for Victory would be to cut down on improper detention, that may be one of the keys to success?
…because if you measure deaths, the only success you can have is reducing them to zero. That’s a no-win game, and the administration isn’t going to play it. I’m sure that you feel this indicates a callous disregard for their deaths, and it’s a horrible horrible thing, and you know what? It is horrible. In war, as a generality, civilian deaths tend to outnumber military deaths. People are going to keep dying there for a long time.
I’m sure something caused the death rate to double, but you haven’t convinced me that it was “revenge for Fallujah.” The CBN site is a pretty shoddy strawman; it’s clear that they have a right-wing Christian agenda, and are posting heavily-slanted propaganda. Where did you get the death rate numbers? Is the doubling from 220/week to 440/week an anomaly, or is it taken over a year?
It would be nice if there were a plan that ignored political concerns – except that such a plan would be almost useless.
You don’t – but your ad-hoc definition of “actionable intelligence” (which almost certainly has a strict definition within the community) was a flawed premise leading to a speculative conclusion. Your cite about the process was much more useful. All I was saying was that you should stick to what you know or can prove.
I hadn’t seen that information. The full text of the ICRC report was not available (as it was intended to be confidential) and it was difficult to get large direct quotations from the report. The article you cited even admits that “It was unclear what the Red Cross meant by ‘mistake’” and that “many detainees were released quickly.” I would be interested to see if the US was detaining more or fewer Iraqis on a weekly basis now than they were last summer.
President Bush noted in his speech that the plan we’re referring to is the Unclassified version of the real plan.
Do you honestly think that because the President says “number of car bombs intercepted and defused” that his generals are going to willfully ignore the information that can be inferred from that statistic? Do you honestly think there’s a general out there saying to himself “I’m sure glad we’re off the hook for tracking their production capacity” and patting himself on the back for being able to do a shitty job? If so, then you need to meet a few generals. They are ball-busting sonsabitches, and are constantly demanding more information. If they find a metric that is more relevant than the broad one used in the Plan for Victory, they’ll use it, and they’ll probably pass it up the chain.
When you say “they do not show a true picture” do you mean that the numbers are falsified? Numbers don’t lie, but we both know that people can lie with numbers. You’re asserting that the administration intends, with malice aforethought, to lie with these numbers.
“Bullshit!”? Now that’s a well-reasoned refutation. :rolleyes: I contend that measuring the number of attacks the enemy initiates is a good gauge of their capability to cause trouble; and I further contend that the number of offensives we are able to initiate (because we saw them first, or had better intelligence) is a solid indicator of how well the Army is doing its job. How are those metrics not valid?
So you assert that the number of dead is going to go down? Surely you mean the death rate. The death toll is a fixed number which will always increase. Live people can die, but dead people cannot live again.
…that twice as many people are dead. If you mean the death rate, it’s going to fluctuate as the insurgents feel the need to put pressure on the US. Large attacks like the fuel truck and the Sheraton bomb are infrequent (but still too frequent) and will skew the rate from month to month. Is this a gradual and sustained doubling you’re referring to?
I wasn’t poking fun at them – I was poking fun at you, for asserting that death tolls can go down.
Nope. Sure can’t. In your cite above, the Army admitted as much – the reason they were not sharing those statistics was that they were deeply unreliable, and they were worried that critics of the war would latch onto the (flawed) figures for propaganda purposes. Guess those generals aren’t too stupid; they anticipated your outrage at them not knowing something which (let’s face it) would take a massive investment of time and energy to know. If you want an irrelevant statistic, by all means, use the Iraqi civilian body count.
Glad to oblige. But seriously, did I not address each of your points? It sure looks to me as though I made an argument for my position on each of your main points.
How 'bout that? …and only a few lines after you laughed when I said I had addressed each of your points. I’m willing to admit that the security over there sucks – but I think that shrilly yelling that “this isn’t a PLAN!” is short-sighted and doesn’t give the document its due consideration.
“Intents and purposes…”
So you’re saying that this document, which was published in 2005, directly caused our actions in 2003 and 2004? That’s right up there with the dead coming back to life, McFly.
There is something new: it is the document. What changes is the existence of the document. Presumably now that it has been published, our generals will work from its strategic goals to create operational and tactical goals to achieve greater security, better economic growth, and more political freedom for Iraqis. Before this was published, there was no plan. Now there is a plan.
Alright. How much detail do you want before you’re willing to call it a plan? What differentiates this document from a plan? Would you like to know which cities we’re going to focus on during which months of the next year or so? Don’t you think the insurgents would like to know that, too? The administration is not going to publish any details that would compromise the effectiveness of the military operations.
I, too, would like a general timetable. I would like to see goals set for each of the metrics. And I’d like the abuse of prisoners to stop. I do not contend that things are going well – but I do think that this plan has the potential to organize US efforts in Iraq towards a set of goals which will, eventually, make things in Iraq better.
I submit that while the metrics in the plan are indeed useless in determining real success, we stop complaining about them. It is clear that the Administration has no clue how to get to real success (if it is even possible anymore.) If we go with real metrics, we’ll never get out of there. If, however, we agree to these fake metrics, which can be achieved, we can declare victory and leave.
So let’s count how many Iraqis go through training without worrying too much about how effective it has been. Let’s count how many are even close to a battle, and not worry about if they are leading. hell, we can measure how much candy the GIs hand out. So, hush people.
So the evidence that there is an actual, plausible method in mind for getting from here to there is no more than “Trust me”? You’re welcome to it.
Etc. One principle of management is that you manage according to what you’re being measured by. Do you honestly think that these criteria will be used by the White House to make top personnel decisions in preference to considerations of which generals have demonstrated their personal loyalty?
This administration’s record of cherry-picking data to support a predetermined position is well-established. That’s why we’re in Iraq to start with, remember?
Where? You really don’t know the difference between objectives and strategy, do you?
Where? In the previous sentence, you said yourself that now that the objectives have been published, the generals can *start * to make a plan to achieve them. IOW, there is at present no plan, only goals and some metrics for measuring the success of a plan - if one existed, that is. You can call that “shrill” if you like, but the emperor still ain’t wearin’ any clothes.
Some. I.e., more than this.
It’s lack of content. It describes Point A and Point B, but no “roadmap” for getting from one to the other, not any at all. Where do you see one?
There is no plan. The whole “plan” was to “stay the course until we achieve victory”, whatever the hell that means. There was also a lot of talk about convincing the American people. In short, no plan. Just keep doing what has already failed, but make it worse. I imagine the “convincing” means more repetition of tired empty slogans and more personal attacks and smears. That’s how the L.A. Daily News sees it too.
http://lang.dailynews.com/opinions/cartoon/archive2/1205/02/cartoon.jpg
…but if your measuring **death rates, **which was what I originally talked about before your little “joke”, then you obviously can reduce that rate.
This isn’t a game.
…oh, the “war is horrible, deaths are bad” cliche, never heard that one before. Thanks for reminding me: I thought that war was a nice, fluffy affair were the insurgents gave us teddy bears and we showered them with chocolates. You’ve shattered all of my illusions now.
Yep.
And it’s a good thing I never said it was. I posed a question: one that the "Plan for Victory doesn’t pose, because the metrics don’t allow it too. Its a trend that won’t be examined-its a question that won’t be asked, because the underlying assumptions behind the plan assume there are only four types of enemy. There is no way I could convince you from my keyboard over here in New Zealand with online citations that the rise in the insurgency resulted from Fallujah, but it is a question that I believe should be asked, and I don’t believe is being addressed by the Pentagon.
…um, that was my point.
Iraq, Measuring Security and Stability, 2005, PDF document about two thirds down the page. Page 23-numbers given extrapolted to a week by myself. But feel free to read it as an increase of 30 casualties/day to 63 casualties/day if you like. And yes, as the original citation showed, the figures come from over a year period. And it is a steady trend, showing growth, and if it was an anomaly I never would have posted it in support of my position.
In case your wondering why I continue to push these figures: the graph in the cited document was the first evidence from the US administration that they have been tracking civilian casualties. Prior to the release of the document, the official Coalition position was that “we don’t do body counts .” Once again, the administration, and those that speak for them, has been caught in a lie.
…please explain how.
…I am extremely careful about what I choose to say. My second post in this thread took six hours to compile, and I didn’t say anything that I either didn’t know or could prove. I’ve provided multiple citations to back up many of the assertions I have made, 13 citations including this post, You, on the other hand, have provided none. Maybe you should stick to what you can prove.
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=5847
http://www.rand.org/commentary/020203WP.html
If you want to pony up a cite that shows that “actionable intelligence” is anything but a Pentagon “buzzword”, that has defining, achievable characteristics, feel free. Otherwise, I stand by the way I define it.
I’m really not surprised.
As the article also showed:
There is overwhelming evidence that the Red Cross estimates were accurate, and the US government never seriously contested the allegation. After the report came out, thousands of prisoners were released in a series of staggered releases…
More information for you…
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/usa0604/
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/iraq0105/8.htm#_Toc93454304
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23372-2004Nov30_2.html
Yet again, if the US were detaining less Iraqis, but the same proportion of people locked up by mistake, does it matter? If they detained more Iraqi’s than before, but they are all guilty, wouldn’t that be good?
…so there is a secret plan. Interesting.
We aren’t talking about a line in the President’s speech, we are talking about the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. If it was a line in his speech, meaningless rhetoric, that would be acceptable. But its not: its part of the “plan.”
You tell me. How many bombs went off in Baghdad last month? The Generals are undoubtably working extremely hard, following a plan with very little strategic scope: meaning they spend more time “putting out fires” than “installing sprinkler systems.”
Of course. Every man can be improved with meetng a few Generals. I’ve served dinner to a few in my time, as well as the Prime Minister of Japan, the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of East Timor. I even told our own Prime Minister to “hurry up” when she was late for dinner once. Now what part of meeting highly ranked people with huge responsibilites who make daily life or death decisions do you want to debate?
Which makes the “plan” a public relations document, doesn’t it? If the Generals aren’t using it, whats the point?
Nope. If you say that last month you intercepted and disarmed 20 car bombers, that is an undeniably true fact. It is also meaningless in context, because potentally 30 bombs may have exploded in the same time frame.
Nope. Never asserted that. No malice involved at all. They believe they are doing the right thing.
…because they are meaningless, easily skewed, and undefined. Lets say there is a city under control of the insurgency. If the US don’t attack, the figures look stable. If the US does attack, the figures look good. If the insurgents take over another town, the figures still look good. And if they reoccupy the town after the Americans move out, the figures still look good. Can you show me how the US measure the “success” of the “Hold” objective again?
…in the original quote from me, I consistantly used the word death rate. You shifted the word usage, I followed along thinking that you understood what I meant. Obviously, what really happened was you never read my post properly in the first place…
…Read the report. Look at the graph. Then get back to me.
Go back and read the post you quoted, and you will see, quite clearly, I was talking about death rates. Three times. I’m surprised you missed it. It was you who bought up death tolls and decided to have a little giggle. Are you surprised I didn’t have a clue what you were talking about?
So what your really saying is that if we knew what the death rate was in Iraq, it would make the US effort look bad. So its better to keep it secret, so that the insurgents and those that oppose the war can’t point out things like we can’t keep Iraqi’s safe. Oh, and those casualty rates that we spent the last two years denying that we had, those figures are flawed. So even if we did release them to the public, they would be wrong anyway.
Just a question, if the US effort is doing really, really badly, don’t the American public have a right to know? Do you believe those figures should be kept secret for propoganda reasons as the US has done?
:: chuckles :: Sure. The Iraqi civilian body count is an irrelevant statistic. :rolleyes: If a few hundred people died every month in your neighbourhood because a bomb went off, would it be irrelevant? If you consider the body count irrelevant, you should take the advice of General Mark Kimmitt, who famously said, in answer to a question during a press conference about TV images of dead Iraqis on television said,** “My solution is change the channel”**
And if it takes massive investment of time and energy to find out the casualty rate accurately, then tough shit. It was the duty of the occupying power to keep track of these metrics, and if was deemed to be too hard, then they should either have planned for it, or they shouldn’t have invaded.
Conceeded.
I’ve more than given the plan its due consideration. I spent six hours on my previous post, and I am now into my seventh on this one. I have lost the better part of Friday night and all of my Saturday checking out various aspects of the report. If you want to consider that I am “shrilly yelling this isn’t a PLAN!” you are more than free to do so. How much due consideration did you give the report? I am more than willing to sacrifice six hours to analyse one of aspect of the report-do you really expect me to spend 18 hours to do the rest just to keep you happy?
The death toll joke, as I pointed out, was entirely of your own construction. Now from the Strategy for Victory, Page Two, Paragraph One:
So yeah, it appears you gave the report so much consideration you didn’t read page TWO.
…and can you clarify the McFly comment for me, are you calling me stupid?
The only thing that has changed has been the publication of the document.
It is the President’s broad strategy from 2003, updated with current progress, and an outlay of challenges that still remain.
No. Wrong. Zip. Nada.
Look, the “Plan” doesn’t even call itself a plan, it is defined as the “Strategy for Victory.” I hope I don’t have to define the differences between a “Strategy” and a “Plan.” for you, let me know if you need some help.
The fact its not called a plan? That it speaks in broad sweeps, with no attention to the small stuff. There are no timeframes involved. The metrics don’t match up with the objectives: one of the three bullet-pointed objectives for the security track states:
From the metrics identified in the report, how would this be measured? If holding an area is so important to the “plan” that the objective is mentioned three times in the report, how come there is no measure? Can you tell me Jurph how much of Iraq is “held” by an adequate Iraqi Security Force Presence? Or would that be propaganda for the insurgents as well…
Oh, and what everybody else said…
Nope.
…the second Fallujah offensive was telegraphed six months out. The current US strategy is to launch an offensive against a town, some insurgents put up a fight, others blend into the community, and others just run away. The current US strategy is entirely reactive, and the “Victory” plan encourages this. And as I said, I don’t think that a list of cities the Coalition is going to focus on is as important to the plan as acutally having some metrics to see if the objectives: Clear, Hold and Build are obtained.
Strawman arguement. Noone is asking for anything that would compromise the effectiveness of military operations.
What we want is a plan. We know reconstruction money is running out, we know that projects are sitting abandoned and unfinished-where is the money coming from? We know that billions of CPA money has disappeared (Over 9 billion , to be percise) over the last couple of years, what controls are being put in place to monitor that? We know from leaked reports that the security situation is abysmal, how well does the report address the rising death toll? There are oil refinaries sitting dormant because the pipes that feed them are so old that the can’t keep up with the production rate, what plans are there in the Strategy for Victory to fix the Iraqi Infrastructure? A plan involves objectives, clearly defined and objective metrics, budgets, logistics, inventory and proceedures. I’ve shown in my past citations that in one case, 85% of sewage and water plants have been abandoned due to security and lack of funds. Where in the plan is this shortfall addressed?
…a timetable is the least of the problems with the plan.
A metric is used to determine the success of a goal. How do you set goals for metrics?
Admirable.
If you weren’t happy with how things were going, and your not happy with how things are now, the “plan” won’t change much, because it is based on the same template as what they started with in 2003. The plan, in a nutshell, is ignore the bombing, ignore the deaths, ignore the attacks, and stay the course.
…hmmm, on reflection, this makes me a Rejectionist! Viva la Freedom!
While you got something about public opinion, I think you left out the most important part: