Senator Lieberman was in Iraq today touring a Joint Security Station, a Forward Operating Base, and a Baghdad market. While he was there, he told a CNN reporter:
You can see the video here, and you can see the left go into convulsions here. Apparently, like McCain, his “rosy assessment” is belied by the fact that he is wearing “full battle gear.” Also, there’s the painful reality that this past month was among the bloodiest for American troops since the start of the war. But, any reasonable person should recognize the fact that an increase in American casualties does not necessarily correspond to a lack of progress on the ground. In this case, casualties are rising as more troops hit the streets and as they deploy forward to areas that had once been no-go, and which are now playing host to Joint Security Stations and the like. Just look at Anbar province, which saw only 15 U.S. servicemen killed in May, one of the lowest casualty counts in that province since the start of the war. In December of 2006, 47 servicemen were killed in the province. Anbar has become one of the big Coalition success stories. So is Lieberman really going out on a limb to say that we’re making progress now and things are better than they were in December?
