Murtha's Crystal Ball

So Congressman Murtha is at it again. Instead of being satisfied with his elevated public profile following his call to abandon the Iraqis, he's now assuming the role of fortune-teller with his predictions of the future.

From the AP:

Murtha Says Iraq Is Now a 'Civil War'
PITTSBURGH
U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year due to political pressure in a Congressional election year, Rep. John Murtha predicted.

Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran from Johnstown, created a firestorm in November when he called for troops to be pulled out of Iraq. On Thursday, he told editors and reporters from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the war in Iraq is a civil war and the U.S. should disengage.

"Our troops are the target," Murtha told the newspaper. "We're not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We're fighting a civil war in Iraq. We've got to give them an incentive. We fought our Civil War. Let them fight their civil war."

Murtha, the senior Democrat on the House appropriations defense panel, said many Iraqis think "it's all right to kill Americans" and that most Iraqis want U.S. troops out of the country.

"There is no reason in the world we couldn't do what we're doing (in Iraq) from the periphery," Murtha said. "I've just come to the conclusion it's going to happen and it's just a matter of time."

Murtha, who voted in 2002 to give President Bush the authority to go to war, said he believes Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had no ties to al-Qaida and wasn't a threat to the United States.

He wants U.S. troops to be redeployed to Kuwait and areas around Iraq. He predicted there will be fewer than 100,000 troops by midsummer and that the pullout by the end of the year.

"We're not cutting and running. We're giving the Iraqis incentive to take over," he said.

Murtha also weighed in on other topics during the meeting, saying the United States should use diplomacy in combating the threats Iran poses to Mideast stability. He also said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., could win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, but that she would lose in the general election.

Is it just me or is it a silly picture? Can you envision him rubbing a crystal ball and telling a gaggle of reporters, rapt with attention, who will win the next election or how many troops we'll have in theater by this time next year? I wonder what forces he's in touch with, beyond his own lunacy, of course.

Regarding his civil war comments, I think Mr. Murtha is confused. It isn't 1968 and we aren't fighting the Vietcong. There isn't a civil war in Iraq. There is, in a small part of the country, an insurgency being conducted by foreigners and disgruntled former Baathists. Their numbers have been estimated at 5,000-20,000 compared with the Iraqi Army's force strength in low 100,000s. Conflict consists of low intensity skirmishes. The general violence hasn't escalated in the past 3 years. It remains a low-grade conflict that is making no progress at destabilizing the nation.

It is hardly a 'civil war' comparable to the American Civil War (as Murtha suggests) or any other civil war for that matter. There are no armies on the battlefield conducting warfare. In fact, most of the country is peaceful. If anything, the insurgency in Iraq resembles gang warfare in South Central Los Angeles. While there was a lot of buzz in 2003 and 2004 about the murder rate in Baghdad being lower than most American cities, I couldn't find any supportive data (aside from blogger's assertions). I actually spent the entire morning doing some research in this area and collected some statistics on the murder rate in Washington DC for 2005 versus the murder rate in Baghdad for 2005. The numbers vary widely depending on what source you're using and how they calculate their data. For example, some reports include 'violent crime' in their murder rate. This would include attempted murders, rapes, assaults, etc. Other reports have varying population figures for each of the cities. The Army figures don't include American or Iraqi security forces casualties. But however you analyze it, the murder rate in Washington is not much lower than that in Baghdad.

DC pop 553,000
35-60 murders per 100,000 = 192 - 330 per year

Baghdad pop 5,948,000
5-20 murders per 100,000 = 295 - 1180 per year.

Would Murtha suggest that there is a 'civil war' in the District of Columbia? I'm just so tired of hearing him and people like him rant on and on, carelessly tossing out supposed 'facts' that are in reality simply either their own opinion or something they heard from someone somewhere. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war, the Four Horsemen aren't upon us, the region isn't descending into chaos, were not in a quagmire and most of all, this isn't Vietnam redux.

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