Petraeus admits increased violence

By Libby But not to worry. Our sainted and infallible GenPet says it's not that bad. BAGHDAD -- Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, acknowledged today that violence had increased since Sunni Arab militants declared an offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "Certainly Al Qaeda has had its Ramadan surge," Petraeus said in his first comments to reporters since he returned from Washington to give lawmakers a status report on the war in Iraq. But he said the level of attacks was "substantially lower" than during the same period last year. Gee that's odd. Did he find one day with with three less deaths in the last two weeks? Because this report would suggest a different trend. In a related development, the Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday on violence trends in Iraq for August. It said the data, while not complete, were "sufficiently reliable" and showed that "the average number of daily attacks decreased to 123 in August 2007 -- the lowest level since June 2006 when the average number of attacks was 121 per day." Think about that for a minute. The warmongers are quibbling over numbers, but we're talking about dead human beings here. It doesn't matter if it's 150 or 100 or "only" 50 a day. That level of carnage is simply not acceptable and our country has no business in being complicit in that level of violence. If we can't stop it, and apparently we simply can't, then we need to get out of the way and let it run its course, instead of delaying the inevitable with our continued intervention.