Month 50 of the War: The Surge That Isn't

THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ IS IN "ITS LAST THROES."

--Vice President Cheney, May 30, 2005

Last month I took a break from my usual monthly Iraq war casualty roundup nomenclature -- Month X of the War By the Numbers -- and headlined that post The Month of Lowered Expectations.

Well, we're more or less back to the usual naming convention this time around, although I did briefly consider something glib (if inappropriate) like Gravity Sucks. This headline certainly would be applicable because the laws of nature, let alone the laws of warfare, have not been repealed by George Bush, whose arrogance is showing some Texas-sized cracks these days as he becomes increasingly isolated from the large majority of Americans who have seen through his deceits and want their fathers, sons, mothers and daughters at arms to come home now.

Expectations for a turnaround in Iraq further dimished in May, the 50th month of the president's Forever War, and it was 31 days of bloody superlatives:

* The third worst month of the war for U.S. casualties.

* The worst month for U.S. casualties since November 2004 when U.S. forces were repulsed in the first Battle of Fallujah, the first major showdown with the then-emerging insurgency that the vice president was to infamously assert was in "its last throes."

* The second half of the worst two-month period for U.S. casualties in the war.

But the really big news is that:

Except for small pockets of improvement and most notably growing disaffection between the Sunni insurgency and Al Qaeda, the surge is not working and shows no sign that it will as Iraq continues its slide into chaos. (While the Sunni-Al Qaeda split is welcome, it is incidental to the surge.)

The reason that the surge is not working is a no-brainer: An 11th-hour change in modus operandi and a paltry 30,000 additional troops are not going to undo the damage inflicted by the White House in four-plus years of stage managing a war that should not have been fought in the first place and was fundamentally misunderstood and underresourced from Day One.

The spike in the U.S. body count is not surprising. General Petraeus and the president himself warned that a consequence of the surge would be an uptick in casualties as U.S. forces put the pedal to the metal, but the fact of the matter is that Iraqi deaths have increased since the surge took hold.

THE GREAT UNWINDING

Fresh evidence of the Great Unwinding comes in the form of this sad dispatch from Washington state:

"Fort Lewis, which this month has suffered its worst losses of the war, will no longer conduct individual memorial ceremonies for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Instead, the post will hold one ceremony for all soldiers killed each month, the Fort Lewis acting commanding general, Brig. Gen. William Troy, wrote in a memo to commanders and staff last week.

" 'As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm's way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,' Troy said."

SURRENDER MONKIES REDUX

When the Iraq Study Group recommended last December that there be a withdrawal timetable, the New York Post called group leaders James Baker and Lee Hamilton "surrender monkies," while President Bush thumbed his nose at their sage advice and ordered additional troops to Iraq.

Now political realities at home apparently have forced the president to belatedly endorse that recommendation.

Writes David Ignatius in the WaPo:

"Yes, that same Baker-Hamilton plan now seems to be official White House policy. Administration officials insist that the president supported it all along, though you could have fooled me. Now it's back -- six months later than it should have been, with six extra months of political poison to corrode its bipartisan spirit. But better late than never."

* * * * *

Herewith our monthly numbers roundup, or what's left of it because U.S. and Iraq officials have been withholding an increasing number of statistics. (May 2007 totals are in orange; April 2007 totals are in black):

MAY 2007 ROUNDUP

1,975 -- (1,558) Iraqis killed (*)
124 (116) -- U.S. troops killed

TWO-MONTH (April-May) ROUNDUP

3,796 -- (March-April: 4,798) Iraqis killed (*)
228 (March-April: 185) -- U.S. troops killed

U.S. WAR-TO-DATE ROUNDUP
3,475 (3,350) -- Total killed

FATALITIES BY CAUSE OF DEATH
3,058 (81.7%) (n/a) -- Hostile
687 (18.3 %) (n/a) -- Non-hostile

COST
$430,492,000,000 ($421,607,000,000)

(*) Includes Iraqi Army personnel, security forces, national police and civilians. Sources: National Priorities Project, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, Defense Manpower Data Center.