Bush Lie #12, 007 - The Surge is Working! Or is it the Bribes Paid to Iraqis Are Working?

No matter what the administration says, the troop surge didn't work and is not working currently. Dropping another 30,000 warm bodies into Iraq did not reduce the violence against U.S. troops.

So what did reduce American deaths? Bribery did. In May 2007, 126 U.S. troops were killed during the second deadliest month of the entire Iraq war. Gen. Petraeus was under pressure from Bush to reduce spiraling casualties in an increasingly unpopular war. So Petraeus "cut a deal" with enemy Sunnis and al-Qaida insurgents.

The military calls Petraeus' program "Concerned Local Citizens." We call it bribery, protection, ransom, tribute, or extortion. Petraeus implemented the policy that no one in Washington seems ready to praise or even talk about; that of paying the enemy money so they don't hurt us.

Some 70,000 former al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents are now being paid by the U.S. military, paid with TAXPAYERS' MONEY, YOUR MONEY. Did you or I authorize Bush to use our money for bribes to cover his failure? It adds up to about a quarter billion dollars ($250,000,000) OF YOUR MONEY a year.

How can we be sure that the bribery worked and not the troop escalation? You have only to look at the numbers. Violence in Iraq reached an all-time high during the initial six months of the surge. Payments, however, suddenly and dramatically turned al-Qaida insurgents into our erstwhile employees, on salary to not kill us.

Now that we're funding them, arming them and training them, they have become "concerned citizens." But these same people who were recently shooting at us are not our friends, they do not like us, they do not want us in their country, and they are still Islamic mujahadin, al-Qaida. That much is unchanged.

Who says OUR money can't buy Bush friends? Why not just give all Iraqis informants jobs with Blackwater so Cheney can make more money too and bring the troops home? The informants won't last long because their fellow Iraqis will kill them as traitors.