Nonsense from O’Hanlon and Pollack

by Larry C Johnson
from NoQuarter.com

The Sunshine boys, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, are out today with patent nonsense that the mainstream media will lap up–We Are Winning in Iraq.

According to O’Hanlon and Pollack in today’s New York Times:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Yes sirree. That O’Hanlon is one tough analyst and critic. Here’s what he told the Voice of America in March 2005:

The last year in particular has seen, first, a great intensification of the insurgency but, at the very end of it, perhaps a slight reduction in its strength and its lethality. And of course, then, the preparation for the elections, which took place in early 2005 and, essentially, commemorated the end of the second year and finished it on a much more positive political note. So we see an economy that’s still struggling, although gradually improving. We see Iraqi security forces that are still in their very fledgling state, although at least starting to get better. And we see a political process that is far from resolved, but at least hopeful.

So if you’re a pessimist or an optimist, either way, you have a lot of evidence to back up your view about how things have gone this last year in Iraq.

Be assured of one thing, O’Hanlon and Pollack did not freely travel around Iraq and did not travel without a security team. Their eight day visit and upbeat assessment ignores other plausible explanations:

1. The slowing of body counts in Baghdad is not a consequence of less sectarian strife; instead, the effectiveness of the death squads and ethnic/sectarian cleansing has reduced the number of targets.

2. Moqtada al Sadr’s control of police and intelligence organs is pretty extensive. He’s biding his time and smartly avoiding a direct confrontation with US forces. There is zero evidence that Moqtada is backing down or backing away.

3. The Sunni controlled forces are doing a better job of defending their sectors. That is true. But Al Qaeda is not the main threat and never has been. But the units in charge in the Sunni sectors out west are not ready and willing to join arm-in-arm with Shia units and work for the benefit of Iraq.

(Continued here.)