The surge have been meeting goals????

According to Petraeus the surge has been meeting its goals. The basis for this repeated Bush administration\Petraeus assertion is that sectarian violence has been reduced by the 50% goal. OK, but hold on, we just had the second deadliest month ever in Iraq. As far as I know, there are only 2 types of violence in Iraq; sectarian....and terrorist. Through the application of fairly simple logic I thereby deduce that terrorism and related deaths are on the rise in Iraq. Did I miss something or is that not our number 1 national security concern? Add on that even Petraeus doesn't know if the Iraq war has made us safer and I am beginning to have a real hard time reconciling the Bush claim of goals being met and something I like to call the facts.

Apparently we should be thankful though because the surge is scheduled to end by July. The press is making this sound like some huge victory for the anti-war crowd and now everyone can calm down and go back to business as usual. Um, guys, hold on. It was a surge. Surges are, by their very nature and definition, temporary. Therefore, the fact it ended a full year after it started is hardly cause to think everything is hunky dory now and those of us who think we need a new direction in Iraq can all celebrate. Bush still wants to have pre-surge troop levels of 130,000 remain in Iraq come July of 2008 and Petraeus estimates another 600 US troop deaths between now and then. Forgive me if I don't jump for joy at the prospect of 130k soldiers still stuck in the midst of a civil war nearly a year from now with no end in sight and hundreds more expected to receive the worst homecoming imaginable. Maybe I'm just giving the Bush administration I think such a total failure a hard time, but with no expected end to this war, rising casualties and increasing terrorist attacks I'm just not feeling good about the success of the surge. Our men and women in the armed services deserve better than to be stuck in that damned desert fighting a civil war for years to come...especially since we're not even sure the war is making us safer anymore (well some aren't sure now, some of us knew it all along).

Madison