Quote of the Day: The Surge Edition

Because it's never too late to have lots of surgetastic goodness. From Rising Hegemon:

NPR actually does its job:

Sometime around February 2004, a top military official in Iraq estimated that there were about 15,000 total insurgents. About a year later, U.S. military leaders in Iraq announced that 15,000 insurgents had been killed or captured in the previous year.

In private, a skeptical military adviser pointed out to commanders that the numbers didn't make sense. "If all the insurgents were killed," he asked, "why are they fighting harder than ever?"

Well, obviously they are either lying or they are fighting zombie-insurgents because the Islamic God is bigger than General Boykin's God.

I'm going with the zombie insurgent hypothesis.

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Again, shades of Vietnam.

As I recall (from Robert Pisor's book about Khe Sahn), after the US abandoned the firebase, a briefing in the White House about the battle listed US estimates of enemy killed and wounded, the size of the enemy forces at Khe Sahn, and the typical ratios of casualties to total forces.

One of the people being briefed did a little arithmetic and found that these numbers indicated that there no enemy effectives on the battlefield.

Plus ca change...

Zombie insurgents, missing wmd's maybe it is time we end this war and stop playing around at the sake of the lives of our youths. I say divide the country into three parts, giving each a share of the wealth of oil and let each live their lives the way they and god want them too! Provide a government which represents all the people. We need to get out of a war between Shia, Shites, and the Kurds. Stop the killing over differences in religious beliefs. (I know it never will happen)

In 1901, during the Boer War, David Lloyd George pointed out in the British House of Commons that if British Army figures were correct then the Boers would have no more soldiers left alive, something that was patently untrue.

Another eminent MP rose and shouted at Lloyd George: "Traitor!".

Indeed, plus ca change ....