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Iraq Study Group Reaches Concensus
reporter writes to point us to a story in the Washington Post reporting that the Iraq Study Group has reached consensus and will issue its 100-page report on December 6: 'The Iraq Study Group, which wrapped up eight months of deliberations yesterday, has reached a consensus and will call for a major withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.' The Post mentions that first word of the panel's conclusions came from the New York Times yesterday. The Times points out that it is not clear how many U.S. troops would come home; some brigades might be withdrawn to Iraqi bases out of the line of fire from which they could provide protection for remaining U.S. operations.
"shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising"
That's how we got into Vietnam.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Personally I wish we (the US and its allies) would formulate a common long term plan (good or bad) and just stick to it."
Personally, I'd rather they not stick to any bad plan. Why would anyone possibly want that? What has "sticking to the same plan no matter what" brought us for the lasdt 3 or so years?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Don't tell anyone we can't win, we Americans hate the truth.
A blog about stuff.
The US and their Allies went into Iraq, without any proof. They messed up the country (and profited from it) now they have to sort it out.
"..before we remove a significant fraction of the soldiers from Iraq, we will plan and implement a self-standing, well trained Iraqi police/armed force.."
Why would Iraqis want to fight for Americans against their own people? If you want them to get serious about running their own country, there's only one way to do so: tell them you're leaving in a few months and then they're on their own.
"It will also destroy what little credibility the US has left."
Bush has already destroyed most of America's credibility, and attempting to continue an occupation that's already lost will only destroy the rest. If you wanted to maintain some credibility in the world, you shouldn't have invaded a third-rate country that posed no threat to you, but did have a population who'd be eager to fight against an invader for as long as it took to kick them out.
So yes, American 'military power' will be a joke after you've been tossed out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by locals with AK-47s, but so what?
Maybe (unlikely) the US will admit it screwed up, request a UN mandate, and allow an international peace keeping force to step in and help administer Iraq till it can get back on its feet?
Only one answer to that: FUCK YOU! You have been arrogant and disgusting with your campaign against those who said invading Iraq was a terrible idea, ruining the career of individuals (those CIA agents who warned there were no WMD in Iraq) or making fun of whole populations (Germans and especially the French), so that nobody wants to help you anymore. Now shut the fuck up or accept publicly you have done a mess, impeach Bush and put him on trial. This is the only way to show you have more than one neuron in your brain that voted twice for the chimp that is in the White House.
I was in the army for quite some time, and there was something that I heard over and over and over and over:
In my experience, turned out to be pretty true. If you want to do something, make a plan, once the plan is done then stick the fucking good idea fairy in a bottle and execute it. If you let that bitch second guess you all the time, you will get your ass kicked every time.
"When reading The Washington Post, always consider the diametric opposite position from whatever agenda the WaPo pushes. Consider http://newsbusters.org/node/6863 [newsbusters.org]"
Reading Newsbusters is as valuable as reading FAIR.org. These so-called "watchdogs" are lapdogs of media that share their own fringe biases, and they bite the media just for not sharing their opinions and political bias.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I'm not as worried about the Shiite dominated area. I think that, in the long run, Arab/Persian tension will keep them from being dominated by Iran. It would be nice to have alternative leadership for the Shiite world.
You should be worried, of course given your apparent dearth of knowledge about the region it is no surprise you see it that way. But here's the problem: Saudi Arabia also has Shi'a areas. And, surprise, surprise, those area have oil. You separate the Shi'a in Iraq and they get a base of operations to foment resistance to the Saudi regime.
As for the Sunni area? They basically become irrelevant, especially since Baghdad will become Shiite. The Saudis will likely step in and offer some sort of support to stabilize this area.
Wow, tacit approval of ethnic cleansing, nice.
All in all you seem to miss the point, the US in reality has no say on whether Iraq splits or not, there is and will continue to be a civil war which will decide these matters.
A blog about stuff.
> Arguing about whether it was right for the US to invade Iraq is rather academic now - however, if the US quits now, you can expect it to be spun as a huge victory for radical Islam.
It's already a huge victory for radical Islam and general anti-US sentiment in the Middle East and elsewhere. Staying there for a few more years of killing and dying aren't going to help that in the least.
> It will also destroy what little credibility the US has left.
Tell us more about this credibility the US has left.
> Maybe (unlikely) the US will admit it screwed up, request a UN mandate, and allow an international peace keeping force to step in and help administer Iraq till it can get back on its feet?
There's not any peace to be kept. The peace-keeping force will be needed after the three major factions have self-organized the new division of power, and only minor skirmishing over local details remains.
The plots at the bottom of this page give a good feel for how much progress we've made in the past 3-1/2 years. "Stay the course" is just a strategy of trading lives indefinitely in order to avoid admitting to a world-class screw-up.
How many times in the past 3-1/2 years have we been told that "the next six months will be critical"? How many times have people cheered when an election or a high-profile capture gave the illusion of progress?
Is there the slightest reason to believe that the next six months, or 3-1/2 years, will be any different?
Frankly, I think Bush's strategy is to leave the problem for the next President, and then claim in his memoirs that we would have won if his successor hadn't cut and run. The neocons are already taking time out from their clamoring for a similar fuckup in Iran, to figure out who they can blame for the failure of their grandiose vision for Iraq.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Divide Iraq into three regions"
Word of advice from the British Empire: things get really sticky later on down the line when outsiders draw lines on maps and tell locals how it's going to be.
I supported the conflict initially, but have since come to realize how foolish this little adventure was. Ultimately, we were duped into believing we could do the impossible. The main problem is that Iraq is an artificial state, with little real unifying history, religion, or any common identity. It was created by the European powers at the end of World War I, following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. It was created arbitrarily, for the sole convenience of the Western powers, with complete disregard to ethnicity and religion. THAT's the problem with Iraq. This is a problem at the very root of society. You can't drop some troops in there, and expect a vibrant, healthy democracy to just magically spring out of the Euphrates.
I think occupations can create democracies, by holding a diverse group of people together long enough to develop a common identity. It was done by some European powers, take India for example. The problem is that this sort of colonialism takes a large-scale occupation, much larger than we have now, for a time span of MULTIPLE DECADES. This is economically, strategically, and politically impossible in the modern era.
In order to hold this unstable country together, you either have to be a brutal dictator like Sadam or act like the freaking Romans. I suspect if every time a US soldier was killed we rounded up and killed 500 random people, the resistance would end quite quickly. However, any nation created this way will only last as long as that threat of force is present.
Ultimately, I think the people in charge of this whole charade knew this was going to happen all along. In the minds of the neocons who started this whole thing, the people of Iraq are just one piece in a puzzle. You'll notice lately that US troop casualties have been falling while Iraqi casualties have been rising. This is because our troops have been retreating to fewer, larger bases, performing fewer daily patrols, and patrol in more heavily armored convoys. The insurgents have gone for easier targets, Iraqi army members, and mainly, innocent civilians. Sunnis fight Shiia, Shiia fight Sunnis, the Kurds just want out entirely, and everyone wants a piece of the non-uniformly distributed oil resources.
I think the military is really content to sit back and watch as Iraq destroys itself, while the US troops serve their purpose, guarding the valuable oil pipelines. For the people in charge, as long as the crude is flowing, the whole country might as well just drop dead. Also, the troops presence serves a second important function. By having a large troop presence in the center of the Middle East, the pentagon intends to keep Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and all the major powers in line. While our boys on the ground fight for their lives trying to help the Iraqi people, the people at the top are looking at grand strategic goals.
And that is why we went there in the first place. Not WMDs, not democracy, not anything else. Our troops are there to stabilize Iraq's oil flow, and to keep the whole region in line, stabilizing the larger oil supply. The Iraqi people are meaningless. Our troops will be behind high walls and thick armor, while the rest of the country degenerates into pure chaos.
what the study group is recommending is "cut and run" or possibly, "cut and walk".
Not that it really matters since Bush is already planning to ignore what the study group says. He'll just continue to "Stay the course".
You are correct. Bush will ignore what the panel recommends and force the next president to do it.
I considered myself to be pretty much a "yellow dog Republican" prior to this election. For you non-USAers, the short explanation of this term means that you would vote for anyone, even a yellow dog, as long as they run under a particular party's banner. I have to give the Republicans credit that whoever invented the "cut and run" statement was able with 3 words to stop all rational discussion of the issue by turning it into a debate on cowardness. All anyone has to do is say "cut and run" and rational debate is over because it's now been shifted into an emotional issue. What finally did it for me and made me vote Democrat a few weeks ago was that I concluded that Henry Kissinger is right that Iraq is not winnable in a conventional sense. More troops won't shore up the porous borders around Iraq that allow the non-stop flow of weapons that are fueling the Shiite-Sunni civil war. The Republicans try to fear monger that the second we leave, Al Queda will come in, but I finally concluded that we aren't stopping Al Queda right now anyway, so why are we still there?
Unfortunately I didn't realize this until after the 2004 elections where I foolishly voted for Bush, but I finally figured out last year exactly why he does what he does. There is a small subset of people who see the world in black and white. He is one of those people. Most people don't see the world in black and white, so they don't know what it is like to deal with these people because there aren't a lot of them. People who see the world in black and white don't agonize over any decisions. They make their minds up very quickly and rarely change them. If they do change them, they go completely to the other side. Ever heard of former smokers who now compaign non-stop to stop everyone, everywhere from smoking? That's kind of how these people are when they change their minds. The biggest problem with these people who see everything in black and white is that they are completely unable to see the viewpoint of anyone who disagrees with them. It's because to them, everything is crystal clear and it's so clear that if you don't see it that way, you must be crazy. Any dissenting words are just "crazy talk" and their minds are completely closed. This is why Bush says things like "If you aren't with us, you're against us." He sees everything in black and white. Once Chaney and Rumsfield and a few others convinced him that Iraq had to be invaded, it was game over. He'll never back down because to him, it's all crystal clear that he was right to go to Iraq and to leave is wrong. I'm amazed that more people don't understand this about Bush. Once you grasp how he sees the world, it's not difficult to understand what he'll do. It explains why he refuses to talk to North Korea except in those bogus "6 party talks". He's made up his mind that the 6 party talks are the only way to resolve it and he can't conceive of a one-on-one approach because that's "crazy talk". Bush is never going to remove troops from Iraq because to him, the issue is clear cut. He's right, his opponents are wrong, end of story.
Actually the US has a UN mandate to be in Iraq. What it didn't have was a UN mandate to go in in the first place, unless you regard resolution 1441 as sufficient.
As far as spinning it as a victory for radical Islam: the US's presence is a victory for radical Islamists, providing endless streams of propaganda and recruits. US withdrawal might embolden the jihadists; but the damage has already been done. Withdrawal might also cause the Jihadi's backers to lose interest in them, much as the US lost interest int he mujahedeen after the AFghan war.
The Iraqis may be slow but the problem is that the whole country was used to a dictator and it took someone that strong and tyrannical to overcome the religious and ethnic differences between the people. Take away the order of the dictator and nobody knows what to do or to expect. You'd be moving slowly too if you'd never experienced democracy and lacked the overwhelming government infrastructure required to make it work. All we have now is lawlessness, and no clear roles for people or groups. Naturally all the thugs and zealots are struggling to get whatever power they can and it has turned into a civil war. In my opinion, the Iraqis are not going to pull it together by themselves because 1.) they have no experience 2.) the disruptive forces are much bigger than the calming forces and 3.) there's no help from their neighbours or anyone in the world. The only way to avoid a 100 year civil war is to have the UN go in with 50,000 peace keepers along with a coalition of middle east leaders (honest ones) and work for 5-10 years on setting up a functioning government and infrastructure. The chances of that happening are next to zero. Bush wrecked the country
I'll wait until I actually read the report.
Considering the source (NYT), I am highly skeptical of their 'summary' of such a report.
If this report said something on the order of:
1. rebuild Iraqi army
2. rebuild Iraqi police force
3. stabilize civil situation
4. exterminate/disarm Shia/Sunni factions.
(...)
88. Paint the house
89. Walk the dog
90. Reduce American force deployments in Iraq
the NYT would summarise as "Bush is a poopyhead; Iraq Study Group agrees with NYT that US forces in Iraq should be REDUCED immediately!"
Remember, this is the 'newspaper of record' that somehow failed to publicize that the Congressional committee on prewar intel found that the original claims of the administration were widely held at the time to be accurate & that Robert Wilson (you know, Mr Valerie Plame) was a self-aggrandizing liar.
-Styopa
"Somehow, I don't see any victory parades... Nor any territory held by them."
Insurgents don't win by 'holding territory', they win by forcing invaders to cower in their 'Green Zone' because they're too scared to come out and play, until they finally decide it would be a good idea to leave.
The whole problem in Iraq is that America thought they could win a 21st century war with 20th century tactics.
Since we never really had an objective, it would be easy to declare victory no matter the outcome. Disarm Saddam of his WMD? Done--before we even arrived! Regime change? Done. Would've been done sooner, if we hadn't armed and financed him, but let's not dwell on fine points. Pay him back for his support of Al Queida and his role in 9-11? Er, okay, bad example.
But PR can do anything. All they have to do is say "We won! Bush is a great leader!" and trumpet it over and over and over and over, while acting indignant that anyone would ever suggest that Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservatives bear any responsibility at all for anything bad that happened in Iraq (though we can credit them for every flower that bloomed, it seems) and eventually people will come around. If there is ethnic cleansing and tens or hundreds of thousands killed in internecine war, it's not as if the US population is going to sit down and say, "well hell, our President is responsible for that." People consider themselves and the government they voted for responsible for the noble things they meant to do, not what they did. A school opened and a child got a puppy? That's because of George Bush, God bless him. That kid gets killed later that day by a rocket? Not us, Bub. This isn't new--how many Americans felt responsible for the Khmer Rouge? How many Americans care that American financiers helped Hitler? There won't be a reckoning, because there never is. It's too easy to pat ourselves on the back for our nobler motives, and ignore what our decisions actually resulted in.
As far as Bush and Cheney are concerned, there are numerous blogs, articles and whatnot out there which describe how people like Dennis Feith and other hawks are manipulating things to make the U.S. the sole power in the world. Not just superpower, militarily, but power as in "We'll tell you what to do" power.
Certainly some of these writings are from conspiracy wackos but others are written by seasoned journalists who document and provide evidence for everything they write. In fact, this article from Asia Times Online, discusses Bush's willingness to ignore both the Study Group recommendations and his avoidance of talking with Syria and Iran.
Let me put it this way. When I first heard Bush say that Iraq had wmds I knew he was lying. I knew Iraq didn't have all these tons of weapons lying around nor have the capacity to produce any such weapons on a moments notice.
Which begs the question: if I knew there were no weapons there, how could this administration not have known there were no weapons there? Further, even when the UN inspectors were doing their inspections (contrary to what some people have said never took place), the U.S. was giving them specific sites to inspect because we "know that he [Saddam] has them" yet not one facility ever produced any evidence that banned weapons were there. That should have sent red flags up all over the place so either Bush ignored these warnings and was determined to "stay the course" or he had already made up his mind to invade Iraq before this whole thing started and the case for wmds was simply a front.
What is really disturbing is that by January or February of 2007, more american lives will have been lost in Iraq than were killed on September 11th. Put another way, Bush, by his actions, will have killed more americans than did Bin Laden. You do remember Bin Laden, don't you? The guy Bush has called irrelevant.
I will make this prediction. Before Bush leaves office, the vast majority of troops will have been pulled from Iraq so Bush will be able to (again) declare, "Mission Accomplished". It will then be left for the incoming president to figure out a way to extract the remaining troops, under fire no less, and not make it look like a retreat. Thus, the onus of failure will not taint Bush's record for posterity, regardless of the facts.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Who, exactly, are they going to support? The current government is a barely functioning coalition of religious factions, several of which have their own private armies. The only thing stopping them going hammer-and-tongs at each other are the US forces.
I do think that the aftermath of the military victory was handled poorly.
This is the latest right wing talking point. Don't admit it was a brain dead idea from the beginning, blame the execution. They're trying the same arguments about Viet Nam. It wasn't the intent, it was the execution. It's setting up Rumsfeld to be the patsy and gives the Republican Congress a pass on not doing anything resembling oversight. Where was all this brilliant insight during the build up to the war?
Divide Iraq into three regions. Kurdistan in the north, which would include the border areas around Mosul, the northern oil fields, etc. A central/western Sunni Arab area, and a southern/eastern Shiite Arab area, including the southern oil fields.
ROFL! That's almost as good the pre-war planning. You just alienated Turkey with the independent Kurdistan idea and gave the Kurds a nearly infinite supply of money to fund Kurdish separatists with the oil field revenue. You alienated one of our better allies in the region and funded ongoing instability in a formerly stable region. Off to a great start.
The Saudis will likely step in and offer some sort of support to stabilize this area.
You got that part right but if you think the Saudi money will go to fund stability you need to put the crack pipe down. The Wahhabis supply most of the really freaky, unstable radicals in the region and there's a good chance the bulk of those funds would end up in the hands of Al-Qaida. Everyone who thinks leaving the Sunnis to depend on the most radial elements of radical Islam for funding please raise their hand.
'm not as worried about the Shiite dominated area.
You're not worried about setting up an Islamic regime run by a radical strong man with ties to Hezbollah? Now I know you're high.
You are right that there's no avoiding a civil war at this point, mainly because it's been going on the last year and half. And you're right that we're not going to fix what's broken with the exercise of military power. Pull our troops back to over the horizon bases...an idea which John Kerry suggested and Bush poo-poo'd. Situate those bases so our guys can help control traffic across the Saudi and Iranian borders. Not that leaving Syria and Jordan borders unguarded is a bright spot, but you have less than 100K troops to work with and that's all you can do. Turn over management of our continued presence to the special forces generals instead of regular Army, which was another huge mistake that tends to get glossed over. But when you have so many screw ups to pick from, it's easy to miss one or two.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Established facts:
1) There were no WMDs
2) We all thought there were WMDs
3) We are currently in Iraq
4) Most of us think we should not have gone in the first place, largely based on what we know now
I am tired of disputing these topics. We are there, right now, regardless of why, and whether or not you did support/would have supported the invasion. Let's get past that and talk about what to do now to try and make the best of this. This report (which, BTW, none of us have actually read) allegedly starts from the present and tries to figure out the best course of action from this point forward, and I applaud that. I just wish that some slashdotters could do the same thing.
We get it, you hate George Bush. He is not (by a long shot) my favorite president either, but that shouldn't matter right now. Can we grow up and move on to actually accomplish something, or do we need to keep pointing fingers and accomplishing nothing?
The plan is to stay in Iraq until the last helicopter leaves the embassy rooftop...
Much as I thought that getting in to Iraq was at best stupid, and much as I think the US really should not be there, simply getting out seems less than responsible. We replaced an insane, cruel, arbitrary dictator who nonetheless kept order (but, of course, for how long) with chaos, foreign occupation and what might seems to be turning out to be an insane, cruel , arbitrary and very disorderly civil war. If there is a way to do it, (which I'm far from sure is the case) we owe it to the Iraqis (and their neighbors and the international community in general) to leave the country with some kind of stability that is likely to last for a bit. Otherwise, we are not only not fixing anything, we have, like a spoiled child , deliberately broken things and are leaving the pieces for everyone else to pick up and try to fix.
It may not be feasible to find a way to manage this. It is almost certainly not going to be feasible without international cooperation which the US administration seems to continue to find distasteful. It doesn't help that they pissed off lots of other countries earlier in the process. It probably will involve a US president going with some serious humility to other countries, hat in hand, to ask for support (which almost certainly means it will not be this US president). But we owe it to the Iraqis to at least do our best to try.
We also owe it to ourselves. Leaving Iraq to fester in civil war will be a legacy that the US will find it hard to overcome. If the civil war involves other Middle Eastern countries, it is hard to see how the US will avoid being seen as the ultimate cause. (Certainly Saddam Hussein also shares a good bit of the blame, but then the US seems to have been at least partly responsible in putting him in power.)
The problem is that punishing the media for publishing "leaked" information makes it too easy for the government to suppress reports about things they did wrong. Just put a "classified" sticker on the topic and hey, we can prosecute anyone who calls us on it. There are very good reasons to guarantee freedom of speech, one of them is protecting against government's abuse of power to silence critics.
So if publishing "leaked" information is prosecuted at all, there should be a reservation that makes it punishable only if the court finds that the information is significantly useful for an enemy power.
C - the footgun of programming languages
"Sorry, I don't give two shits about their country, if it dissolves into civil war, or dissolves into thin air. I bet most Americans don't."
So what do you think going into a country promising liberation, tearing down a regime and destroying the status quo, and then running away when it comes time to rebuild because a handful (yes a handful) of American lives are lost is going to do? Do you think the Islamic fundamentalists who've been preaching war on the West will turn around and say "oh, let's leave them alone now"? No, all it will accomplish is installing a new, possibly even more anti-Western regime in Iraq and leave the Iraqi people as a massive reservoir for terrorist recruitment as they'll (quite rightly) feel betrayed by the Western armies that came in, shot the place up, and then left them to pick up the peices amidst nationwide strife. Again.
It's exactly your kind of thinking that is one of the greatest fuels for the fundamentalist cause. The idea that the relatively tiny amount of American lives that will be lost stablising Iraq are worth more than the many many thousands of arabs who will die if coalition forces pull out too soon is nothing short of racist. Why would you expect some kid growing up under the thumb of an oppressive regime in the Middle East to turn away from a cause that demands the wanton murder of Westerners when you have no greater respect for the lives of his people?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Every soldier I have asked who has returned from actual combat in Iraq has said the whole country is fucked and was getting more fucked every single day. The Iraqi military and police are either incompetent or completely infiltrated by insurgents, the Iraqi people almost all hate America, the reconstruction effort has been horribly mismanaged and is almost a complete failure.
I'm sure there are some soldiers out there who love to fight and kill and do all the soldierly things, or who are fanatical Bush supporters, or who can't admit to themselves that their friends died or that they killed people for no good reason - but the fact is, Iraq is a victory for Iran and al-Qaeda, not the US.
Sad that simple geopolitical facts escaped the group.
But first look on the second page, the list of group members brings up an odd question. Why is Clinton Confidant Vernon Jordan on that list? Why are three out of four of the democrats, people who were under Clinton? Oh right because the Democrats believe he was such a genius. However I think that would make anyone but the most diehard Clinton fans balk. Why is the Fourth democrat a senator who was defeated in an election where he was the only democrat incumbant to lose?
Republicans are slightly better, at least having attorney generals, and Supreme Court Justices from a variety of Area, but there's still a lot of concern to be had there. This just makes me feel there is just reason for anyone to ignore the report.
The bigger problem is they have debated reaching out to Iran and Syria for help on Iraq. Anyone who has a little knowledge of the situation of both countries knows Iran is a quagmire waiting to happen and have likely been sponsoring or instigating the insurgence in Iraq, Syria is normally seen as a group who has in the past conducting state sponsored terrorism, however they have "cleaned up their act" at least enough after 9/11 that we can pretend to work with them. Though both countries would have been better options to attack over Iraq, and still are, the only problem is both have issues that made them less desirable.
The soldier I asked was pretty drunk, but I figure we can forgive that since he was discharged due to losing his right leg above the knee from a roadside bomb.
If you see him again, buy him a beer for me.
This is something we don't hear about very much. I was deeply distrubed when the news and government started to only report U.S. fatalities. Every other report of war I'd ever heard talked about casualties, as in soldiers taken out of combat by death or injury. It sounded very suspicious -- the numbers sounded fairly low (at the time) relative to other conflicts, but all I knew about other conflicts were casualties, which are always several times higher than the number outright killed. Yet those numbers weren't being mentioned, making it sound like a deliberate attempt to hide the larger and thus more depressing number.
So as we cross past the 3,000 mark of dead coalition soldiers, we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries, but nevertheless we're going to be seeing a whole lot more soldiers like the one you met. Especially like that, since the roadside bomb taking out a soldier's legs but not killing them seems to be the most common mode of injury.
I hope to God all those people who support this war will "Support the Troops" when they see one sitting at the traffic light on a board, no legs, holding a sign that says "Iraq vet, need food and work" and drop the man some cash. I know I will.
Figures are from http://www.icasualties.org/oif/
The enemies of Democracy are
The casualty number is high and fatality number is low for two reasons:
1. Because we are essentially entrenched at critical, known locations, our units are easy to locate and sabotage. Also, because they are largely in cities full of civilians, it's often impossible to identify an enemy until they've already struck. That means that just about every attack is a surprise attack, with minimal chance for winning any particular conflict. This is going to result in high casualties, fatal and non-fatal.
2. Because of improvements in medical technology, and quick access to medical services due to the locations they're fighting in, many of the casualties turn out to be non-fatal, even if they otherwise cripple or maim the soldiers in question. This keeps the fatality number low compared to the overall casualty count.
#2 is the reason that they pick the fatality number over casualties, the smaller number looks better. Combine that with the fact that most people don't understand the difference between fatality and casualty, and you've got good spin with no effort.
Fnord.
Here's an idea for the US to somewhat vindicate itself: move the troops to Darfur and set up a safe area for the refugees near the border with Chad. This time most of the international community will support you, the local population will love you, there'll be a clear frontline and you'll do some actual good. Of course there's no oil but I'm sure that doesn't bother the lofty idealists in the white house.