One of the shell games used to justify the surge is to compare the summer months to their immediate predecessors. But in the summer, temperatures reach 120 degrees, and it's too hot to leave the house, much less engage in strenuous, sweaty urban warfare. So the relevant comparison wouldn't be summer against spring, but summer against summer. Over at The Angry bear, Frank de Libero created a graph comparing just that:
GI fatalities are, to be sure, only one metric, and one might expect them to increase during the surge in any case. But the pattern is clear: There's been more violence every month this year than in the corresponding month the year before. This holds true for civilians outside Baghdad, too. So here's what the surge can claim: No political reconciliation, and an increase in violence over the year before. That's one impressively turned corner.
