PETRAEUS SAYS U.S. HAS KILLED "THOUSANDS" OF AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

Gen. David Petraeus has written a letter to the troops, reprinted in today's The Washington Post. Really, the letter is intended as propaganda intended for the American public, with the message that the surge is working real progress in Iraq. The letter is however replete with exaggerations and simplifications.

Petraeus makes it seem that the number one threat in Iraq is AQI. He mentions Al Qaeda at least five times, such as "thousands of members of Al Qaeda" being killed or captured by U.S. forces.

My question for Gen. Petraeus: how many members of AQI do you think are in Iraq? General, may I suggest you look at Andrew Tilghman's piece for Washington Monthly about this very point. According to the experts, Tilghman finds that there are only about 850 members of AQI, and that number is probably on the high side.

Writes Tilghman

"To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."

"It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics . . . "

"How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization.""

So what then does Petraeus mean when he congratulates his troops and says that they have killed or captured "thousands" of Al Qaeda members?

This is just hype, just spin, just propaganda. Why does Petraeus emphasize Al Qaeda in his letter? For the same reason George Bush does, to conflate 9/11 terrorists with the insurgents fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. We all know there is no connection. The Iraqi insurgents want the Americans gone, want the tanks gone, want foreign occupiers gone. They fight the U.S. troops because they are invaders and occupiers, not because they espouse bin Laden's view of Islam.

Petraeus is playing a dangerous game, the same one Bush is playing. Politicizing the war so that history will have trouble blaming these politicians and these generals for the worst catastrophic mess-up in U.S. history.