Despite the steady decline in U.S. casualties in Iraq, it seem the AP has found away to spin the story into bad news–they’ve started doing their year-end retrospectives two months early:
With just under two months left in the year, 2007 is on course to be the deadliest year on record for American forces in Iraq, despite a recent sharp drop in U.S. deaths. At least 847 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year – the second-highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to Associated Press figures.
A very effective way to reframe the debate–deaths are down sharply the last few months, BUT it’s still been a horrible year for American troops overall. To which a friend of the WWS reponds:
You can always play stupid games with numbers. The bottom line is very simple–if the objective is simply to stop Americans from getting killed, then we should have pulled out bag-and-baggage long ago. If the objective is preventing America’s enemies from achieving an enormous victory and establishing a base for further attacks, then we did the right thing, as measured by the astonishing defeat we have inflicted on al Qaeda over the past year, and the amazing drop in violence across the country. We paid a price for those gains; in the past, we had paid the price and not made gains. In my view, this is better.
